KABBALAH in ITALY
1280-1510
A Survey
MOSHE IDEL
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Introduction i
i. Kabbalah: Introductory Remarks 19
2. Abraham Abulafia and Ecstatic Kabbalah 30
3. Abraham Abulafia's Activity in Italy 40
4. Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore 52
Contents
5. Abraham Abulafia's Hermeneutics 64
6. Eschatological Themes and Divine Names in Abulafia's Kabbalah 77
7. Abraham Abulafia and R. Menahem ben Benjamin:
Thirteenth-Century Kabbalistic and Ashkenazi Manuscripts in Italy 89
8. R. Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati 106
9. Menahem Recanati as a Theosophical-Theurgical Kabbalist 117
10. Menahem Recanati's Hermeneutics 128
n. Ecstatic Kabbalah from the Fourteenth through Mid-Fifteenth
Centuries 139
12. The Kabbalistic-Philosophical-Magical Exchanges in Italy 154
13. Prisca TheoliKjia: R Isaac Abravanel, Leone Ebreo, and
R Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano 164
14. R Yohanan ben Yitzhaq Alemanno 177
15. Jewish Mystical Thought in Lorenzo il Magnifico's Florence 192
16. Other Mystical and Magical Literatures in Renaissance Florence 202
17. Spanish Kabbalists in Italy after the Expulsion 212
18. Two Diverging Types of Kabbalah in Late-Fifteenth-Century Italy 219
19. Jewish Kabbalah in Christian Garb 227
20. Anthropoids from the Middle Ages to Renaissance Italy 236
21. Astromagical Pneumatic Anthropoids from Medieval Spain to
Renaissance Italy 269
22. The Trajectory of Eastern Kabbalah and Its Reverberations in Italy 287
Concluding Remarks 293
Contents
Appendix i. The Angel Named Righteous: From R. 'Amittai of
Oria to Erfurt and Rome 315
Appendix 2. The Infant Experiment: On the Search for the
First Language in Italy 3 24
Appendix 3. R Yohanan Alemanno's Study Program 340
Appendix 4. Magic Temples and Cities in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance: Mas'udi, Ibn Zarza, Alemanno 344
Notes 349
Bibliography 467
Index of Manuscripts 477
Index of Titles 480
Index of Names 486
PREFACE
The following survey of Kabbalah in Italy was inspired by a series of lectures I
delivered at the opening of the Avraham Goldstein-Goren Center of Jewish Studies
at the Universita degli Studi in Milan in the winter of 1998. It is my great pleasure
to thank the late Mr. Avraham Goldstein-Goren for initiating these lectures,
for caring about their publication, and for providing this lecturer with generous
hospitality. The English manuscript of the lectures was translated into Italian
by Professor Fabrizio Lelli some years ago. This volume incorporates revisions
to the original material and the addition of some new chapters, taking into
consideration salient recent scholarship.
My own survey of Jewish thought in Italy has inevitably benefited much from
earlier pioneering work by many scholars, including the late Professors Isaac
Preface
Barzilay, Umberto Cassuto, Efraim Gottlieb, Adolph Jellinek, David Kaufmann,
Cecil Roth, Gershom Scholem, Moses Schulvass, Joseph B. (Giuseppe) Sermoneta,
Israel M. Ta-Shma, and Chaim Wirszubski; as well as Menahem Ben Sasson,
Robert Bonfil, Giulio Busi, Saverio Campanini, Don Harran, Alessandro Gueta,
Fabrizio Lelli, Arthur Leslie, Avraham Melammed, Mauro Perani, David Ruderman,
Aviezer Ravitzky, Shlomo Simonsohn, and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson. All have
contributed considerable knowledge, perspective, and insight about the vast
speculative literature produced by Italian Jewry. Yet notwithstanding the great
effort already invested, no detailed study of kabbalistic literature in Italy is
available. This volume represents a first attempt to survey the main writings
and ideas appearing in kabbalistic books and manuscripts composed in Italy and
Sicily between 1280 and 1510. These temporal parameters reflect, first, Abraham
Abulafia's arrival in Italy for the second time in 1279 and the beginning of his
kabbalistic literary activity there, while 1510 represents the end of the literary
activities of the generation of Italian and Spanish Jews who were contemporaries
of the Florentine intellectuals Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola and the
arrival in Italy of the Kabbalists who were refugees from Spain.
The three main Kabbalists to be analyzed below are R Abraham Abulafia,
R Menahem Recanati, and R Yohanan Alemanno. Each was a prolific writer
who originated a vision of Kabbalah that was to a great extent new and influential,
at least insofar as Italian Jewish culture was concerned. Abulafia's ecstatic
Kabbalah was clearly novel as an articulated kabbalistic system; Recanati articu-
lated a form of theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah previously unknown in Italy;
and Yohanan Alemanno's astromagical interpretation of Kabbalah was likewise
almost unknown on Italian soil. These three thinkers, who also represent three
major models in Jewish Kabbalah, are seminal figures not only in the history of
Kabbalah in Italy but also in the history of Kabbalah in general.
The bulk of the present survey evolved from numerous detailed articles and
monographs I dedicated to these figures, as well as to additional kabbalistic
writings in Italy. In the following pages I have attempted to treat these topics and
authors from a more integrated perspective, comparing them to one other, and
the various brands of Italian Kabbalah to those found in Spain and Byzantium.
Though the book grew from a series of publications in various languages
over the past twenty-five years, I have reworked the material and integrated it
in more comprehensive schemes, taking into consideration processes dealing
with the development of Kabbalah as a whole. My discussions with friends and
scholars over the years about topics dealt with in this volume have been extremely
helpful, and I shall mention here especially Professors Robert Bonfil, Brian
Copenhaven, Fabrizio Lelli, David Ruderman, and Stephane Toussaint, and, last
Preface
but not least, the late Professors loan P. Culianu, Joseph B. Sermoneta, and Chaim
Wirszubski.
The basic methodological approaches that informed the following discussions
are drawn from a variety of methodologies, especially the historical-philological
one, which puts great emphasis upon the study of manuscripts and their historical
filiation, as well as on the need to read texts in their conceptual framework. This is
the reason why I treated the different Kabbalists in different chapters. However,
from the conceptual point of view I am closer to the Warburg school and its
reverberations in the study of the Renaissance, especially the emphasis put upon
magic and astrology. I hope I learned much from the writings of Daniel P. Walker,
Edgar Wind, Frances A. Yates, and their followers. The parallel developments in
scholarship in Italy, as represented especially by the studies of Eugenio Garin and
Paola Zambelli and more recently by Franco Bacchelli and Stephane Toussaint,
were indispensable for some of the conclusions drawn below.
Many thanks are due to Ann Hawthorne's rigorous editing of the English-
language manuscript; her queries were sometimes a challenge but contributed
much to the clarity of the exposition.
INTRODUCTION
i. A Survey of Kabbalah
This book is the first comprehensive effort to survey the main stages of the
development of Kabbalah in Italy, from its inception in the last decades of the
thirteenth century until approximately 1510. My main focus is the works written
in the Italian peninsula that both their authors and others conceived as being
Kabbalah. Since an overall definition of Kabbalah — as of Italy in the Middle
Ages — is filled with problems, like any attempt to define vast corpora such as
philosophy, science, poetry, or magic, I prefer to use these two criteria of internal
and external perception to delimit the relevant material, in itself highly diverse,
covered in my analysis. 1
Introduction
This book is therefore not a history of Jewish culture or even of Jewish thought
in Italy in this period but a much more specific enterprise. Although I will neces-
sarily touch upon other forms of Jewish mysticism, such as the Heikhalot litera-
ture, that were known in the peninsula, and upon mystical aspects of Jewish
philosophy that developed there, this survey focuses upon the variety of literatures
that inspired Kabbalah in Italy, such as the Jewish classical traditions and medi-
eval philosophy, magic, and astrology, and upon the affinities between kabbalistic
phenomena and parallel or similar ones in Italian culture.
I deliberately use the term "survey" rather than "history." In my opinion, one
single history is not possible for such a complex phenomenon as Kabbalah; rather,
it comprises a wide variety of histories. We already have histories of certain
ideas and concepts that developed over centuries in accordance with changes and
variations upon themes such as the righteous, tzaddiq, and the Shekhinah, the
feminine description of deity; 2 the constellation of ideas related to the Golem; 3 and
the avatars of the chain of being in Jewish mysticism. 4 There are also histories
of each of the main schools or models as they developed in various centers and
literatures. So, for example, a history of ecstatic Kabbalah must cover not only Italy
but also Byzantium and Jerusalem, as well as Safedian Kabbalah, Sabbateanism,
eighteenth-century Hasidism and its opponents, and recent developments in the
printing of Abulafia's writings and their study by a variety of audiences. There
are also histories of Kabbalah in a specific city, such as Venice or Florence, which
are more concerned with what was written in a particular place or is extant there
though written elsewhere; in these the importance of the local culture prevails over
a broader picture of literary genres or conceptual structures of this mystical lore.
Biographies of individual Kabbalists and histories of specific kabbalistic manu-
scripts or libraries also contribute to a fuller picture of this lore. Kabbalah can also
be seen as part of a history of religion as well as reflecting a mentality embedded in
a specific culture and thus studied as cultural history. None of these histories
should be neglected, and their findings should be integrated as much as possible.
However, after all is said, it is the content of these literatures rather than their
material manifestations in manuscripts or books that remains most important.
The elucidation of content requires not only historiographic disciplines but also
philological skills in dealing with manuscripts, languages, and terminologies.
The ascending importance of magical and astrological material, for example,
demands an acquaintance with literatures that have remained outside the scope of
several recent and more comprehensive scholarly understandings of Kabbalah.
When their position in this larger linguistic and cultural context is understood,
the Kabbalists can be seen to stand at the intersection of more than one type of
intellectual history; and this is especially true in the case of Italian Kabbalah.
Introduction
Let me mention the obvious: Kabbalah is a vast and complex literature, compris-
ing commentaries on classical Jewish texts, analyses of commandments and cus-
toms, their meaning and specific ways of performance, descriptions of mystical
techniques and a variety of mystical experiences. The scholar has at his disposal texts
that present no comprehensive theories accepted by all or even most Kabbalists.
Clearly, generalizations about this lore, as about any comprehensive literature that
developed over centuries in many geographical areas, produce only precarious results .
The texts that I shall present in the following chapters attest to the great diversity
of sources available to Kabbalists living in the Italian peninsula, and to the
complexity of ideas that resulted. My basic assumption about these figures (as about
Kabbalists elsewhere) is that creativity involves not only originality, the ability to
innovate ideas, but also the capacity to study a variety of literatures, mystical or not,
to bring some aspects of them together in an organized manner that was relevant
not only for the Kabbalist alone, but also for others. I am not concerned with a
romantic picture of innovative genius; my interest lies with the Kabbalists' impulse
for drawing from traditions and revelations to find structures of knowledge that
could be integrated into their own tradition. 5 The three major figures on whom I
focus below were thinkers and mystics who also organized prior traditions,
expressed in quite articulated books and even comprehensive systems, into new
forms. Abraham Abulafia, the founder of ecstatic Kabbalah, conjoined Maimonidean
philosophy with a linguistic technique found in Ashkenazi Hasidism. This enter-
prise involved bringing together the mentalist tradition of Neo-Aristotelianism with
a vision in which language and its manipulation were a central religious
preoccupation. R. Menahem Recanati, in contrast, imposed a vision of the divine
powers, the ten sefirot, as divine instruments upon kabbalistic material that was
already considered authoritative, to produce a different theosophy in which those
sefirot constituted the very essence of the divine. At the same time he emphasized
the impact of human rituals, namely the biblical and rabbinic precepts, upon the
supernal realm. Whereas Abulafia elaborated what I call an ecstatic-mystical model,
namely a way of thought and a practice that sees the attainment of mystical experi-
ence as the quintessence of religion, Recanati developed a theosophical-theurgical
model, one that sought to affect processes in the divine sphere through intensive
performance of the commandments. This model also has experiential aspects,
but they differ radically in purpose from Abulafia's. The third figure on whom I
shall focus, Yohanan Alemanno, accepted the validity of the two earlier models
but transformed them into what can be described as a talismanic, Hermetic, or
astromagical model by emphasizing the importance of an astromagical understand-
ing of religion. 6 The fact that these three models were most fully articulated by
Abulafia, a Spanish Jew by extraction, by Recanati, an Italian Jew, and by Alemanno,
•3-
Introduction
the descendant of an Ashkenazi family that had migrated to Italy, without entering
into polemical discussions with other Jews in their immediate vicinity, reflects
both the receptivity and the freedom these Kabbalists enjoyed in the various Italian
territories. They were capable of reorganizing traditions in new ways because they
operated in territories in which rabbinic authority was relatively weak and in which
the earlier theological traditions had ceased to be relevant. The vast majority of the
traditions described in the following chapters arrived in Italy from elsewhere. Thus,
it is important not only to understand these Kabbalists' organization of knowledge
but also to discern where and how the different themes, texts, and even whole
literatures arrived in the Italian peninsula and sometimes also the individuals who
were instrumental in bringing them.
Almost inevitably, perhaps, all the themes and literatures addressed here are
connected to a phenomenon of uprootedness, to a movement of ideas, books, and
persons from one place to another. As the Kabbalists moved to new centers of
learning and encountered new forms of knowledge there, they transformed the
kabbalistic knowledge they had brought with them, reshaping knowledge in those
new places. This continuous flux is a phenomenon that has not been sufficiently
addressed in the scholarship on Kabbalah, and it is in any case more evident in the
case of the history of Kabbalah in Italy. This geographical flux dramatically
affected the content of the kabbalistic literatures.
2. The Geographical Perspective
My assumption here, as in other studies, is that a better understanding of these
literatures necessitates analyses based on distinctions among schools, their
specific terminologies, and their different ways of organizing knowledge. It is
impossible to impose one grand narrative upon such a project. Rather, we must
follow several histories of several kabbalistic models, and trace the tensions and
interactions among them.
In earlier studies I have advocated focusing upon both sociological and geo-
graphical dimensions of kabbalistic literatures that have previously been ignored.
For example, discerning the different layers in Jewish society that generated the
various forms of Jewish mysticism, propagated them, and changed the direction
of earlier forms of mystical literature would surely promote a better understanding
of the kabbalistic literatures. 7 On the other hand, tracing the dissemination of
models and forms of knowledge in a variety of geographical areas clearly requires
focusing upon specific centers of creativity and specific trajectories. In addition, a
lore written by persons who were in many cases itinerant scholars must take into
account the implications of an itinerant life and the impact of different encounters
upon the content and structure of thought of those persons.
•4-
Introduction
Geographical designations are already widely used in modern scholarship to
characterize the different dimensions of Jewish mysticism. Thus, the Jewish
pietistic figures who were active in the late twelfth and the thirteenth centuries in
southern Germany's Rhineland are called Hasidei Ashkenaz. "Ashkenaz" is a
geographical as well as a cultural category describing some segments of Judaism
active in certain areas. Similarly, Provencal Kabbalah is distinguished from the
Catalan or Castilian one. More recently the importance of Byzantium in the early
Middle Ages for later developments in medieval Judaism has begun to be recog-
nized. "Safedian Kabbalah" is a term used widely to describe the sixteenth-century
outpouring of kabbalistic creativity in the small Galilean city. Hasidism in the
eighteenth century is sometimes described as eastern European, and some
segments of it are even described as Polish.
"Italian Kabbalah," however, is a rare term, in some cases absent even from
descriptions of Kabbalists who flourished in the Italian regions for all or most of their
lives. I shall use the term both in a geographical sense, for the kabbalistic oeuvres
written in the Italian territories, and in a phenomenological sense, for a certain type
of literature that differs from the writings found in other centers of Kabbalah.
Several of the Kabbalists whose thought is analyzed in the following chapters
came from or identified with other geographical and cultural areas: Abraham
Abulafia, for example, was born in Saragossa; Reuven Tzarfati's name points in
the direction of France; Yohanan Alemanno, though born in Italy, was proud
of the Ashkenazi origins of his family. Many other Jews, Kabbalists or not, came
to Italy from Spain after the expulsion of 1492; and a variety of nonkabbalistic
thinkers active in Italy came from elsewhere: R Jacob Anatoli from Provence,
R. Yehudah ibn Matka from Toledo, R Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen (Gracian)
from Barcelona, R Qalonymos ben Qalonymos ben Meir from Aries, and
R Shemaryah Ikriti of Negroponte and, later, Elijah del Medigo from Candia, in
Crete. The last two returned to their homeland and died there. Does this continu-
ous influx of persons, texts, and traditions subvert the legitimacy of locating the
developments in a certain area to a specific geography or a historicist approach?
In the case of Italy, the answer, I think, must be no. Both historical and geograph-
ical trajectories are essential to an understanding of how knowledge is transmit-
ted. Perhaps also as important are the imaginary trajectories of knowledge derived
from ancient, reliable sources and its emergence in new religious ambiances.
3. Heikhalot Literature and Other Esoterica in Italy
The intellectual history of Jewish communities in Europe during the early Middle
Ages is obscure. No significant evidence of substantial literary creativity in Europe
is extant before the tenth century. The active early centers of Jewish creativity were
•5-
Introduction
in the East, either in the land of Israel or in the Babylonian rabbinical academies.
What information we have about centers in Europe comes mostly from the responsa
sent from masters in Baghdad in the tenth century to Jews asking for religious
guidance. This evidence indicates that between the fourth and the ninth centuries
Jewish learning expanded from the East to the West, establishing the basis for
many later developments in legalist studies, commentaries, poetry, and liturgy.
The first reliable evidence of Jewish mysticism in the Apennine peninsula comes
from testimonies written in Italy in the ninth century concerning mythologems in
the so-called Heikhalot literature, a body of diverse short literary texts dealing with
the supernal palaces and the divine chariot, as well as with magical techniques to
ascend to them, or to conjure angels. This literature, written mostly in Hebrew,
probably in the land of Israel, stems from the early Middle Ages, but there is no
scholarly consensus about the precise period when they were written.
There are several solid indications that Heikhalot literature was known in
Rome, or in Italy in general, relatively early. Rav Hai Gaon, a tenth-century master
active in Sura in Babylonia, was asked by some persons in Kairuan, Egypt, about
the veracity of some books in which divine names were found and which were
used for magical purposes. They claimed that some reliable "sages from the land
of Israel and from the land of Edom" had seen miracles accomplished by use of the
books. 8 In his reply, Hai Gaon, who was skeptical about popular understanding of
the operations of the divine names, subtly disparaged the authority of those
witnesses, writing that formulas found among "the persons from Rome and from
the land of Israel" were also found in his milieu. 9 He thus reduced the "sages"
described in the question to just "persons." Unfortunately, we lack any informa-
tion about the identity of those Italian scholars who relied on magic. The only
report that may lend support to Hai Gaon's reference comes from a description of
Rabbi Todros of Rome, a member of the Qalonymos family, hugely influential
among the Hasidei Ashkenaz, who "pronounced the [divine] name over the
lion and bounded it and compelled it." 10 This tiny scrap of information, whether
based in historical fact or in legend, at least provides an indication that Jewish
notables in Rome possessed esoteric knowledge, and that magic was part and
parcel of it.
It seems safe to assume that important esoteric material, similar to or identical
with what Rav Hai Gaon knew in the East, existed in Rome as early as the begin-
ning of the tenth century. We have firmer evidence from the late eleventh or early
twelfth century, when R. Nathan ben Yehi'el of Rome, a major figure in the Jewish
life in the city, wrote a famous dictionary of terms found in the Talmud; in an entry
there he refers to a detail occurring in the most famous story in Jewish mysticism,
the rabbinic legend about the four sages who entered the supernal Pardes. 11 The
Introduction
meaning of this legend is debated in scholarship, but for our purpose it suffices
to characterize it as testimony that late-antique Jewish mystics believed it was
possible to ascend concretely to another form of external reality and experience it.
R Nathan interprets the meaning of the difficult phrase 'Aunei shaysh tahor, "the
stones of pure marble," as follows:
It is explained in Heikhalot Rabbati and Heikhalot Zutarti that they did deeds
and prayed prayers in a pure manner and made magical use of the crown,
and they gazed at the palaces and saw how the guards of angels stand and
how there was palace after palace, and within the palace, as Rabbi 'Akiva
said to them: "When you arrive at the stones of pure marble do not exclaim:
'Water Water!'" The meaning is that for someone who arrives by his gazing
at that place it is as if he sees many waters, although there is no water at all,
but a mere image appears to him, and if he exclaims: "Water!" he is rejected,
since he is telling a lie. So it is explained in Heikhalot Rabbati. 12
R Nathan explains the nature of the ascent not as an actual detachment of the
soul or the astral body from the corporeal body in order to penetrate the supernal
worlds, but as a vision of an image, a view that he introduces by the word "mean-
ing," namely interpretation. The source for this reading of the psychanodia as an
illusion is mentioned immediately afterward, when R Nathan adduces the view of
Rav Hai Gaon to the effect that the ancient mystics "do not ascend on high, but
that they see and envision in the chambers of their heart, like a man who sees and
envisions something clearly with his eyes, and they hear and tell and speak by
means of a seeing eye, by the divine spirit.'" 3 Therefore, R. Nathan is acquainted
with this earliest introspective interpretation of Rav Hai, but his verbatim quota-
tion from the Heikhalot Rabbati points also to an acquaintance with the Heikhalot
literature itself. The Roman master's acceptance of the importance of inner vision
rather than of the mystical ascent on high is congruent with Rav Hai's view that
the glory of God was revealed to the prophets through the "understanding of
the heart" — 'ouanta' de-libba'. Far from expounding a mystical ascent of the
soul, the Gaon offers instead a radical reinterpretation of ancient Jewish mysti-
cism. In the vein of more rationalist approaches, he effaces the ecstatic or
shamanic aspects of Heikhalot experiences in favor of psychological interpreta-
tion. Though I imagine that Rav Hai's and Rabbi Nathan's recastings of an earlier
religious mentality were motivated by Rav Hai's adherence to rationalist think-
ing/ 4 we cannot ignore the possibility that his psychological perception bears
some affinities to much earlier views of the book titled Ma'aseh Merkauah, namely
the Account of the Chariot, 15 which is part of the Heikhalot literature. Thus we
learn that seminal texts of Heikhalot literature were indeed present and quoted in
7-
Introduction
Rome, together with a psychological interpretation emanating from Baghdad,
rather soon after this interpretation was committed to writing there.
These two testimonies are corroborated independently by a third piece of
evidence, found in Megillat Ahima'atz, the Scroll of 'Ahima'atz, a famous
family chronicle composed in 1054 but surveying much earlier periods. There
R Shefatiyah, a mid- ninth-century figure active in Oria, is described as possessing
and continuously using the Ma'aseh Merkavah and as also dealing with secrets.
R. Shefatiyah bequeathed the book to his descendants, one of whom mishandled
it, and they all were severely punished. 16 In highlighting both the special sanctity
of this book and its extraordinary power, the account seems less interested in the
mystical content of the esoterica than in its magical content; such a perspective
pervades the Megillat 'Ahima'atz, which mentions contemplation of the secret of
the Merkavah only once. 17 The question is whether we may identify this book with
a short cosmological treatise from the Heikhalot literature that bears the name
Ma'aseh Merkauah. The content of this small book scarcely invites such veneration.
Much more interesting would be a proposal that identifies Ma'aseh Merkauah
with the Heikhalot Rabbati, mentioned in the passage quoted above, which
deals with acquiring the purity necessary to achieve a vision of the supernal
palaces. And indeed, an important mid-thirteenth-century book written in Italy,
R Tzidqiah's Shibbolei ha-Leqet, attributes a quotation that is taken almost verbatim
from Heikhalot Rabbati to Ma'aseh Merkauah. 18 What is interesting from our point
of view is the fact that elsewhere in the same book Ma'aseh Merkauah is quoted
again, but this time the short statement found there is not traceable in the extant
Heikhalot literature. 19 This opens the possibility that in medieval Italy there was
material belonging to this literature, unknown from the extant sources.
More legendary is the account, replete with magical motifs, describing
the arrival of esoteric literature from Baghdad in Lucca via the famous intermedi-
ary Aharon or Abu Aharon. 20 According to a tradition of R Eleazar of Worms,
this figure transmitted the secrets of prayer to the representative of the Qalonymos
family, R. Moshe. In an important and detailed genealogy describing how
these secrets reached the Ashkenazi territories, he writes that his Ashkenazi
predecessors
received the secret of the structure [tiqqun] 21 of prayers and the other secrets
rabbi from rabbi, up to Abu Aharon, the son of R. Shmuel the Prince, who
came from Babylonia because of a certain deed, 22 and he had to wander from
place to place, and they arrived in the land of Lombardy, in a town named
Lucca, and there he found our Rabbi Moshe, who composed the poem "The
Awe of Your Wonders," and transmitted to him all his secrets. He is our
Introduction
Rabbi Moshe, the son of our Rabbi Qalonymos, the son of our Rabbi
Yehudah. 23 And he [Moshe] was the first to leave Lombardy together with
his sons, Rabbi Qalonymos and our Rabbi Yequti'el, and his relative Yiti'el,
and other important persons, who were brought by Charles [the Great] with
him from Lombardy and were settled in Mainz. 24
From the perspective of the history of Jewish esotericism in Italy this testimony
is interesting. According to it, the transmission of esoteric knowledge was limited
to the Qalonymos family: Abu Aharon arrived from Baghdad and gave his secrets to
a member of an important family in Lucca, but this person left Lombardy together
with his family and settled in southern Germany. Italy was therefore the place
where the most important esoteric tradition of the Hasidei Ashkenaz first arrived
from the East, but this event did not, at least according to the passage above, leave
any impression in the Apennine peninsula. Probably sometime around 917 the core
of the esoteric traditions brought from Baghdad was moved to Mainz and launched
a center of Jewish esoteric speculation in Germany. I cannot pursue here the
historical problems involved in this testimony, but I assume, with Joseph Dan and
Avraham Grossman, that, specific dates aside, the arrival and emigration of the
esoteric traditions in and from Italy are in their general contour reliable. 25 There is
also good reason to assume that the main esoteric topic presented in the passage
above, the secrets of prayers, had earlier sources. 26 In any case, we have explicit,
nonlegendary testimony from the eleventh century about the arrival of Italian Jews
in Ashkenaz, bringing material related to esotericism: Rashi, the famous R Shlomo
Yitzhaqi, testifies that he heard that a certain R. Qalonymos ben Sabbatai from
Rome went to Worms and transmitted both legalist teachings and interpretations
of poems that were quoted by Ashkenazi authors. 27
In contrast to the Ashkenazi account, which mentions only Abu Aharon's
arrival in Lucca, Metjillat 'Ahima'atz states that Abu Aharon visited several Jewish
centers in Italy before returning home to Baghdad. 28 No mention is made of
the Qalonymos family. It seems that some form of competition over a privileged
relationship to this eastern figure may be discerned in these different family
testimonies. 29
The literature produced by the southern Italian poets contains an angelology
quite similar to that of the Heikhalot literature; Metatron, one of the most impor-
tant angels in Jewish mysticism, plays an important role, as do other angels
that populate the Heikhalot imaginaire. 30 The presence of a Heikhalot worldview
among many Jewish masters in Italy establishes a common denominator between
them and other Jews in France and Germany. 31 We may assume that this mythical
framework, combining maps of an anthropomorphic supernal world and a belief
•9-
Introduction
in the magical powers of the divine names, lingered in various circles in medieval
Italian Jewry, to be reinforced by reverberations from Germany and France. In any
case, it is important to underline the view of R 'Ahima'atz, who described his
forefathers, the sons ofR 'Amittaiben Shefatyah, as — inter alia — "understanding
secrets" (meuinei sodim), "meditating by means of Binah" (be-Binah metzappim),
"knowing mysteries" (yode'i razim), and "contemplating the divine chariot" (mistak-
kelim be-merkauah). 32 Clearly, esoteric knowledge was a strong factor in ensuring
the prerogatives of the mid-ninth-century Jewish elite in Italy. Whether these
epithets also reflected actual praxis in contemplating the divine chariot is at least
a possibility. If future studies corroborate the presence of such praxis, southern
Italy will serve as the bridge between the groups in Israel that practiced those
mystical techniques and the Hasidei Ashkenaz, who reported on persons who
ascended on high in a manner reminiscent of the Heikhalot literature." Especially
interesting in this context is the testimony from a major Italian figure, the
thirteenth-century R. Tzidqiah ben Abraham Rofe', attributed to his father, that
R. Eleazar Qallir, a major poet active in Israel in the sixth century, ascended on
high when he composed one of his liturgical pieces. 34
In an important recent study Ephraim Kanarfogel claims that we may describe
the Italian elite in the mid-thirteenth century as an extension of the Ashkenazi elite. 35
In this context, special attention should be given to the fact that that R. Benjamin ben
Abraham Anav was called a prophet. 36 He was the brother of R. Tzidqiah, the author
of Shibbolei ha-Leqet, mentioned above, and was perhaps the father of a student of
Abraham Abulafia's in Rome. 37 For a better understanding of the emergence of the
first main kabbalistic school that flowered in Italy, the ecstatic one, the prophetic
elements in Ashkenazi territories are very important. Indeed, Ashkenazi and French
Jewish literature contains earlier references to people called prophets, 38 and the fact
that such an attribute was also used in Italy in the Middle Ages may help to explain
both Abulafia's claim to this title in Italy and his criticism of the use of divine names
for magical purposes. 39 In any case, it should be emphasized that all three of the
Kabbalists active in Italy, whose thought we shall be surveying, repeatedly referred
to the Heikhalot literature and held it in great esteem. 40 Their veneration, however,
does not reflect the preservation of an Italian tradition from the ninth century, but
instead an acquaintance with Ashkenazi esoteric treatises and manuscripts that had
saved this literature from oblivion.
No book originally written in meridional Italy dealing exclusively with themes
of Heikhalot literature is extant or even known to have existed. Instead, Italy served
as a waystation for an esoteric literature originating in the East and reaching the
West. Just as in matters of rabbinic literature Bari and Otranto were viewed as
sources of the Torah by a major rabbinic master in the twelfth century, 41 even
Introduction
though voluminous and original halakhic writings from these towns are unknown,
so too in matters of esoterica Italy was viewed as a major source, even though little
substantial material survives to corroborate such a claim. Recently Eli Yasif has
proposed seeing southern Italy as a center from which Jewish folklore radiated to
other European centers. 42 We thus witness indications of the existence in southern
Italy of a major center of learning that suddenly collapsed, and whose most impor-
tant contributions were absorbed in other centers where the lost grandeur was
still remembered.
4. R Sabbatai Donnolo
The earliest major contributions of Italian Jewry are diverse, ranging from the
historically oriented Book qfjosiphon and Megillat 'Ahima'atz to R Nathan ben Yehi'el's
widely reproduced talmudic lexicographical Sejer ha-'Arukh. None of these works
is concerned with speculative issues for their own sake. But the tenth century
also marked the production of several philosophical works by R Sabbatai
Donnolo, including a Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, that reflect an acquaintance with
Neoplatonism. 43 These works affected further developments in Jewish mysticism in
Italy only obliquely and in a minor way, via the Hasidei Ashkenaz, with one possible
exception. As Elliot R Wolfson pointed out, in Donnolo's Commentary on Sefer
Yetzirah there is a more complex understanding of the ten sefirot as reflecting some
divine quality and as part of the divine power, ha-koah ha-^adol. 44 Following the view
of David Neumark, Wolfson assumes that Donnolo may have had an impact on
Sefer ha-Bahir, a book containing one of the first formulations of kabbalistic theoso-
phies. 45 Indeed, I believe that Wolfson is correct in his analysis, though we may see
Donnolo not as the source of this way of thought but as one more example of the
development of theosophy found in some few Jewish sources written long before
him. Donnolo's treatment of the sefirot not only demonstrates the survival and
transmission of second-century material, which I have already analyzed elsewhere; 46
it also resembles a tradition found in a Samaritan book, in which God reveals a
Glory, which is something like a second God, by means often ranks. 47
In any case, while other authors in southern Italy were concerned with the
Heikhalot literature but never, to my best knowledge, with Sefer Yetzirah, Donnolo
was concerned with this book but not with the Heikhalot literature. However, the
two types of earlier literature became the basis of Hasidei Ashkenaz, and to a
certain extent also of Kabbalah.
5. The Arrival of Jewish Philosophers in Italy
Neither Donnolo's writings nor the other figures mentioned above left a signifi-
cant imprint on speculative thinking in Italy. Metnllat 'Ahima'atz survived in a single
Introduction
copy. This situation reflects not the irrelevance of those thinkers but a strong
decline in the literary activity of Italian Jewry in the second half of the twelfth
century and the early thirteenth century. This hiatus created a discontinuity in
speculative thought, and when a new burst of books emerged in the thirteenth
century, they drew upon more sophisticated forms of thought that were in vogue
in the new centers of learning in the Mediterranean: the Neo-Aristotelian theories.
In Rome, Capua, and Sicily, the centers of learning in thirteenth-century Italy,
there was no return to traditional Jewish ways of thought. The arrival of several
philosophers from elsewhere created a totally different intellectual climate. So, for
example, the arrival of R. Jacob ben Abba Mari Anatoli from Provence in the first
part of the thirteenth century introduced a strong Maimonidean approach, 48 and
the appearance of some commentaries on the Guide of the Perplexed in the second
part of this century became an important intellectual factor. 49 Most of them were
antagonistic to the Heikhalot literature and to approaches characteristic of Hasidei
Ashkenaz. Anatoli derided those who believed in the manipulations of the divine
names as related to Ma'aseh Merkauah. 50 This tradition dealing with divine names
may reflect earlier views, for it is also documented in Hasidei Ashkenaz and later
in ecstatic Kabbalah. 51
Much more comprehensive was the amount of philosophical knowledge
brought to Italy by R Yehudah ibn Matka from Toledo. He wrote an extensive
compendium of philosophy in Arabic — apparently while in Castile — and trans-
lated it into Hebrew under the name Midrash Holdimah. However, unlike Anatoli,
Ibn Matka was much closer to esoteric speculations; he even referred to some
speculations related to the Hebrew alphabet by the term "Kabbalah." 52 R. 'Ahituv
of Palermo, in the second half of the thirteenth century, was also influenced by
Maimonides. Even more extreme than Anatoli in his approach to philosophy and
critical of Kabbalah and magic, including Heikhalot literature, was R. Zerahyah
ben Sha'altiel Hen, who arrived in Rome from Barcelona. 53 More moderate
and closer to some mystical issues were R Hillel of Verona, who cited one of the
earliest kabbalistic books, the Book o/Bahir, and Nahmanides. 54
However, no example of an articulated mystical literature can be detected in
Italy until the 1270s. Although a variety of Christian mystical authors and orders
flourished in Italy at the end of the twelfth century and during most of the
thirteenth, Italian Jews were scarcely aware of, and in any case not responsive to,
the mystical renascence represented by St. Francis of Assisi or St. Bonaventura.
Neither can we find an explicit reference to the Joachimite spiritual movement,
inspired by the Calabrian monk Joachim da Fiore, in thirteenth-century Jewish
literature in Italy. The only possible exception is a translation of sermons dealing
with metaphysics by Alexander the Minorite; but this was a Scholastic not a
Introduction
mystical text. 55 We may, of course, speculate about the possibility of one influence
or another coming from those religious movements, but the discrepancy between
the philosophical openness and receptivity of the Jews, as we shall see below,
and their total silence on the radical developments in Christian mysticism in
this period renders such a possibility doubtful. In any case, I find it difficult to
detect in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century kabbalistic literatures in Italy a
Christian influence similar to what is plausibly documented in the case of Catalan
Kabbalah. 56
On the other hand, several Jewish authors in Italy demonstrated receptiveness
to contemporary philosophical developments in the peninsula. In the thirteenth
century R Jacob Anatoli and R. Moshe of Salerno cooperated with Christian
colleagues in their philosophical enterprise, and R Hillel of Verona was well
acquainted with Scholasticism and translated several works from Latin. 57 In the
fourteenth century the Jewish philosophers R. Yehudah Romano, R. Immanuel of
Rome, Qalonymos ben Qalonymos in Rome, and Shemaryah of Negroponte were
active in translating works into Hebrew and Latin from Arabic and Latin, although
most of their production centered on commentaries on philosophical books.
Whereas in matters of philosophy the affinities between Jews and Christians are
visible, and collaboration between them is historically well documented, there are
no indications in this period of similar exchanges between mystics from the two
traditions. The Jewish philosopher R. Yehudah Romano did translate a short
discussion on prayer stemming from Pseudo-Dionysius's The Diuine Names, as
quoted in a book by Aegidius Romanus. 58 However, as I have shown elsewhere,
this Neoplatonic understanding of prayer as causing the elevation of the soul, but
totally rejecting the possibility of changing the will of God by praying, was not
adopted by Jewish Kabbalists — with the exception of one philosophically oriented
one 59 — but instead was used by Rabbi Leone da Modena in early seventeenth-
century Venice to criticize kabbalistic theurgical understandings of prayer. 60
Let me emphasize: None of the writings of the medieval Italian mystics was trans-
lated into Hebrew or even quoted by Kabbalists, whereas several of the Scholastic
treatises were translated, studied, and in some cases quoted by Italian Jews. The
latter even translated some specimens of Dante's Diuine Comedy into Hebrew, 61 and
Immanuel of Rome imitated his chef-d'oeuvre. 62
The arrival of new waves of philosophical speculation is certainly not a novel
phenomenon in the history of European Jewry. However, in other countries this
arrival created a stir or, in some cases, sharp polemics that shaped the cultural
history of the Jews living there. This was certainly the case of Spain and Provence,
but also of Germany and France. 63 A polemical literature consisting of epistles and
bans, sometimes quite extreme in their formulations, is evident in those countries
•13-
Introduction
in the thirteenth century; it affected Italy much less. The traditional Jewish elite
remained weakened or marginal in the Italian peninsula and had nothing to
say about the impact of the new speculations. The fact that Anatoli took refuge in
Italy because of the resistance his sermons aroused in Provence is emblematic
of the situation. Although this general openness to the ideas of newcomers occa-
sionally led to frictions and critiques, especially in the case of R. Zerahyah Hen,
receptiveness rather than antagonism characterized the Italian intellectual scene.
Typical of this openness is Immanuel of Rome's enthusiastic description, in his
Mahabbarot ha-Hesheq, of the arrival of many manuscripts from Toledo and the
eagerness of the Italians to consume them. 64
Thus, despite the early beginnings of Italian Jewish literature in the Middle
Ages as religiously close to traditional forms of Jewish mystical and magical
themes such as are found in the Heikhalot treatises, in the thirteenth century
Jewish speculative literatures in the peninsula went in a quite different direction,
reflecting the importation of new modes of thought. Whereas the traditions that
emerged first in Italy had a lasting significant impact elsewhere in Europe, con-
tributing to new elaborations, in Italy after the ninth century those views were
muted. Ruptures rather than continuities characterize the history of speculative
thought in the peninsula before the mid-thirteenth century, and afterward this
phenomenon continued, with the abrupt arrivals and dispersals to other centers
of both Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah. 65 The facts that the Maimonidean
rationalist tradition was independent of the Italian culture and that the sources
of the Ashkenazi esoterica had been lost in the peninsula explain why someone
like Abulafia, who offered a synthesis between them, remained indifferent to
contemporary forms of Christian mysticism. The kabbalistic traditions upon
which Recanati elaborated were mostly imported directly from Catalan and
Castilian circles of Kabbalists. The case of Yohanan Alemanno is more complex:
as we shall see, he capitalized on previous Italian Kabbalists but also drew
upon developments in some astromagical circles active in fourteenth-century
Castile. 66
Thus, the various forms of Italian Kabbalah were the result of massive direct
importations of esoteric knowledge from Spain and Provence, although they may
have had much earlier roots in the Near East. This swift move from the centers
where this esoteric knowledge was committed to writing, a phenomenon I would
like to call "uprooted traditions," sometimes involved a shift from esotericism to
exotericism and, related to this shift, sometimes also a trend toward comparisons
between Kabbalah and various philosophies. The latter trend is visible in the
Quattrocento in Tuscany.
•i 4 -
Introduction
6. Imaginary Trajectories: Kabbalah as Pythagorean Philosophy
Southern Italy in the Middle Ages was unquestionably one of the most multicul-
tural places in Europe. Much earlier, however, it hosted another important
intellectual event that had repercussions for the development of religion in Europe
in general and, in a much more modest way, the development of Jewish mysti-
cism: the emergence of the Pythagorean school. The ideas of Pythagoras and
his followers never disappeared from the cultural horizon of Europe during the
Middle Ages, especially because of the teaching of various forms of Middle
and Neoplatonism, 67 and in some cases this persisting trend had an impact
on Kabbalah. 68 During the Renaissance, however, Pythagoreanism enjoyed a
dramatic resurgence as a result of some translations by Marsilio Ficino.
In one of the most widespread descriptions of Kabbalah in the Renaissance,
Johann Reuchlin claims that he is restoring the ancient Pythagorean philosophy,
lost in southern Italy but surviving in one way or another in Kabbalah. In dedicat-
ing his De Arte Cabalistka to Pope Leo X, he writes:
For Italy's part, Marsilio Ficino has published Plato, Jacob Faber of Staples
has brought out Aristotle for France. I shall complete the pattern, and for
Germany I, Capnion [Reuchlin] , shall bring out the reborn Pythagoras with
your name at its head. His philosophy, however, I have been able to glean
only from the Hebrew Kabbalah, since it derives its origin from the teachers
of Kabbalah, and then was lost to our ancestors, disappearing from south-
ern Italy into the kabbalistic writings. For this reason, it was almost all
destined for destruction, and I have therefore written of the symbolic
philosophy of the art of Kabbalah 69 so as to make Pythagorean doctrine
better known to scholars. 70
This is an interesting case of prisca theolcujia, a concept of concordance among
various types of ancient knowledge that will concern us more in chapter 13.
What is striking from our point of view is that Pythagoras is described as having
drawn his philosophy from the Jews — not a new idea, to be sure, but here
Kabbalah is invoked explicitly. In doing so Reuchlin resembles Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola:
That divine philosophy of Pythagoras, which they call Magic, belongs to a
great extent to the Mosaic tradition; since Pythagoras had managed to reach
the Jews and their doctrine in Egypt, and knowledge of many of their sacred
mysteries Zoroaster, the son of Oromasius, in practicing magic, took
that to be the cult of God and the study of divinity; while engaged in this in
•15-
Introduction
Persia he most successfully investigated every virtue and power of nature, in
order to know those sacred and sublime secrets of the divine intellect; which
subject many people called theurgy, other Cabala or magic. 71
Thus, already Pico associated Kabbalah and Pythagoras. But whereas the
Florentine thinker emphasizes here the performative aspect of Kabbalah, by com-
paring it to magic and theurgy, Reuchlin is concerned more with the speculative
aspects of Kabbalah, its philosophical and symbolic cargos, although this point is
also hinted at in Pico's passage. In other cases, too, Pico associates Pythagorean
views with Kabbalah. 72
Another comparison of an important kabbalistic topic, metempsychosis, to
Pythagoreanism is found in a Jewish Kabbalist writing in the late Quattrocento,
R Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of Genazzano:
I have also found that similar views were held by Numenius the Pythagorean 73
and by Guadlando. 74 Numenius, out of his love of Moses' Torah, thought
that Moses' soul had been reincarnated in his own body. 75 . . . And as regards
this statement, 76 according to which the Kabbalists maintained that human
souls are reincarnated in animal bodies, I answer that this view is
to be found only in the works of later Kabbalists, 77 and I did not find
any support for this view in our Sages' statements. However, I have found
that this is the opinion of a certain ancient philosopher, i.e., Pythagoras
and his sect. 78
What seems to me fascinating is that a Kabbalist openly admits that a major
kabbalistic view, which he accepts and defends, is not found in the classical books
of rabbinic Judaism, but is sustained by an ancient and pagan thinker. R Elijah
Hayyim of Genazzano follows Recanati when he states that this view is the
patrimony not of the early Kabbalists but of the later ones, although what exactly
this distinction means for him is far from clear. Even more exceptional in any
kabbalistic writing is the assumption, which he attributes to Numenius, that
Moses' soul transmigrated and entered the body of a pagan, Plato, however
intelligent he may have been.
Were the early Kabbalists mentioned by Reuchlin considered to be from
southern Italy, like the Pythagorean thinkers? This is a difficult question to answer.
However, we should remember that a person from southern Italy, more precisely
Sicily, was more instrumental than any other figure in advancing the knowledge of
Kabbalah in Florentine Christian circles: Pico's teacher, known by a rather pomp-
ous series of names, which include Flavius, Gullielmus, Ramundus, Mithridates,
and Moncada. Flavius Mithridates, as he is most commonly known, was the son of
•i6-
Introduction
a certain Nissim Abu al-Faraj from Girgenti, a Jew of Syrian extraction, and appar-
ently a Kabbalist himself. 79 He converted from Judaism in 1481, made a career as a
humanist, and became a figure in the Christian ecclesiastical hierarchy. Flavius
possessed an outstanding knowledge in many languages and was well acquainted
with a variety of domains in Jewish thought, especially Kabbalah; 80 he even
mentions an event in Palermo related to Abulafia's performing miracles there that
may reflect an oral local tradition. 81
Mithridates is known as the translator of many kabbalistic and Hasidei
Ashkenaz books into Latin. 82 In 1485 he translated a book attributed to
Pythagoras, Aurea Dicta, from Greek into Latin. 83 A few years earlier, in 1481, in a
sermon delivered in Rome in the presence of the pope, he preached about the
agreements among different ancient religions, using a passage from Eusebius of
Caesarea's Praeparatio Evangelka as a starting point:
And from the Pythagorean philosopher himself, I mean Numenius, I will
quote as follows from his first book, On the Good: 84 "But when one has
spoken upon this point, and sealed it by the testimonies of Plato, it will be
necessary to go back and connect it with the precepts of Pythagoras, and to
appeal to the nations of good repute, bringing forward their rites and doc-
trines, and their institutions which are formed in agreement with those of
Plato, all that the Brachmans, and Jews, and Magi, and Egyptians arranged." 85
Although he was one of the greatest experts in matters of Kabbalah in the
fifteenth century, Mithridates does not present Pythagoras here as having extracted
his knowledge from Kabbalah; instead he sees the Jews as part of a more general
religious agreement. However, what he did not say in 1481, before he began the
translation projects that involved both Pythagoras and Kabbalah, became known
among Jewish and Christian Kabbalists at the end of the 1480s, as seen above:
Pythagoras was inspired by Kabbalists.
Mithridates was well acquainted with and contributed to some developments in
Italian Kabbalah and Italian Jewish culture in general. He translated into Latin
not only some of the most important and difficult kabbalistic books of Abraham
Abulafia and Menahem Recanati and philosophical books and commentaries by
R. Yehudah Romano and Gersonides, but also the Qur'an and a Pythagorean book,
in which he quoted a passage from St. Bonaventura. 86 Through these diverse
efforts he brought together mystical materials from a variety of sources and genres
and presented a strongly Christianized version of Kabbalah, which immediately
caught the attention of the genial and sometimes gullible Count Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola, who accepted at face value what Wirszubski called the
"mock mysteries" of his teacher. 87 Unquestionably, Flavius contributed greatly
■ii-
Introduction
to the interest in kabbalistic literature in Florentine circles at the end of the
Quattrocento, and to the specific ways in which it was understood there.
In this respect, for the period we are surveying, the history of Jewish esotericism
in Italy came full circle, replicating its beginnings: a Jew whose father had arrived
from the East studied Kabbalah in Sicily, brought his vast knowledge of it to Rome
and Florence, and then to Cologne in Germany — a trajectory reminiscent of the
esoteric traditions of Abu Aharon of Baghdad, who in the ninth century brought
eastern esoteric traditions to Italy, whence they traveled to other centers of
European Jewish learning. This time, however, the dissemination of knowledge
extended well beyond elite Jewish circles and into Christian elites, via the claim that
Kabbalah was an ancient philosophy that Pythagoras had learned from the Jews.
This move from particularism toward universalism represents a development that
has some sources in Italian Kabbalah, especially in Abraham Abulafia, and in
Italian Kabbalists who decoded the esotericism that was dominant in some forms
of Spanish Kabbalah, as, for example, Recanati, Reuven Tzarfati, and Alemanno
did. 88 Reuchlin dedicated to Pope Leo X his intellectual enterprise of rescuing
Pythagoras's allegedly lost philosophy by resorting to Kabbalah, a fact that evinces
the shift in the status of Jewish Kabbalah in Italy, from an imported body of
writings cultivated by a few Jews in the thirteenth century, to an esoteric lore that
was both philosophical and magical and imagined to conceal Christian tenets.
To the major stages of this and other metamorphoses of Kabbalah in Italy, the
following chapters are dedicated. I shall try, however, not to describe the medieval
and Quattrocento Jewish Kabbalists in a teleological manner, as a form of praepa-
ratio evangelica for its future "peak" of being absorbed into Renaissance Christian
thought. Such a presentation would involve the distortions that inevitably accom-
pany retrospective projections of later important developments upon earlier
events. In my opinion, the Renaissance Christian chapter in the history of
Kabbalah was no more inevitable a development than any other chapter in the
history of Jewish mysticism. However, the fact remains that different schools and
models of Kabbalah, from Italy and elsewhere, did converge in late Quattrocento
Florence, especially in the writings of Yohanan Alemanno. These schools and
models are important both in themselves and as aids to a better understanding of
views expressed by Mithridates and Pico and their followers, as part of a Florentine
intellectual renascence.
The diversity that characterizes kabbalistic literature makes a monolithic
definition of Kabbalah neither possible nor plausible. Every school has its own
distinctive imaginaire, deserving serious and undogmatic exploration, and the
Jewish Kabbalists between 1280 and 15 10 are no exception.
■18-
KABBALAH
Introductory Remarks
i. Between Particularism and Universalism
One of the most interesting features of Jewish culture is the continuous oscillation
between two attitudes toward the majority cultures in which they exist: the particu-
laristand the universalist. In their efforts to cultivate and preserve their own rituals
and traditions, individual Jewish communities have at times flourished, suffered,
and eventually perished in cultural ambiances very different from those of the
centers where these particularist attitudes were initially articulated. Particularism
is marked by adherence to Jewish rituals and the Hebrew language, universalism
by the adoption of cultural attitudes and practices prevailing in the larger,
non-Jewish cultures in which Jews have lived.
•i 9 -
Kabbalah
These two tendencies produced two corresponding approaches among histori-
ans of Judaism: nineteenth-century historians, who for the most part lived and
worked in European diasporas, particularly in Germany, at a time when accultura-
tion to the Christian Enlightenment culture was still regarded as the cultural
ideal, emphasized universalist and integrative factors. In the twentieth century,
especially after the Holocaust, particularism acquired a positive moral valence and
universalism a negative one. Thus, for example, the leading nineteenth-century
historian Heinrich Graetz regarded Kabbalah as the bete noire of the Jewish
Middle Ages but portrayed Maimonides as the paragon of Jewish culture. 1 In
contrast, the major Israeli historian Yitzhak Baer viewed Jewish medieval philoso-
phy as a major factor in the conversion to Christianity of Jews in Spain. This
perspective reflects the strong influence of Gershom Scholem's axiology, which
emphasized the importance of Kabbalah as a particularist lore. 2
Indeed, the relatively recent positive attitude toward Kabbalah depends to a
very great extent on the pivotal change in the view of the nature and role of Jewish
mysticism produced by Scholem's magisterial studies. His positive and sympa-
thetic approach to this lore opened the way to regarding mysticism as an active
and integral factor in shaping Jewish history. The most powerful influence was
Scholem's chef-d'oeuvre Sabbatai Seui. This book deals in detail not only with a
major messianic figure but also with the emergence of a massive popular messi-
anic movement in Judaism. His hypothesis concerning the emergence of
Sabbateanism reflects a particularist vision of Kabbalah, in which the wide diffu-
sion of kabbalistic messianism via Lurianism served as the indispensable back-
ground for the emergence of the collective messianic phenomenon known as
Sabbateanism, affecting the beliefs and lives of a wide variety of Jews, both com-
mon folk and learned rabbis, living in different geographical and cultural centers. 3
This more particularist approach to later developments of Kabbalah differs from
Scholem's portrayal of the emergence of early Kabbalah, in which Neoplatonism
and Gnosticism produced a synthesis that he called Jewish Gnosticism — a lore
generated by the confluence of two spiritual trends that were different from, and
eventually antagonistic to, rabbinic Judaism. 4 Thus according to Scholem's account,
Kabbalah over time became increasingly internalized and particularist.
My own view of Kabbalah assumes a different trajectory, from the particularist
to the universalist. In my opinion, the sources of nascent Kabbalah are to be
sought largely, though not exclusively, in the various Jewish traditions. 5 This lore,
in all its various forms, gradually became increasingly open to the cultural ambi-
ances that hosted the various centers of Kabbalah. Such is the case of Zoharic
Kabbalah, which absorbed more Christian elements than the earlier theosophical
Kabbalah; 6 of ecstatic Kabbalah, which was initially strongly influenced by
Kabbalah
Neo-Aristotelianism and in its second phase absorbed Neoplatonic and Sufi
elements; 7 and of the Kabbalah in Italy, which had strong philosophical compo-
nents from the end of the fifteenth century until the first third of the seventeenth
century. 8 Even the late-sixteenth-century Lurianic Kabbalah, based on the thought
of the famous Rabbi Isaac Luria in Safed, which originally emerged from a particu-
larist perspective, was already interpreted in strongly Renaissance philosophical
terms only one generation after its inception. 9 In my opinion, both Sabbateanism
and, later, Hasidism may also be better understood in terms of a stronger interac-
tion with the larger non-Jewish cultures around them. 10 This is certainly the case of
the history of Kabbalah in Italy.
2. KABBALAH: A MONOLITHIC OR POLYVALENT PHENOMENON?
In contrast to earlier views of Kabbalah as a somewhat monolithic phenomenon,
we shall see that a wide variety of spiritual concerns preoccupied Kabbalists, both
Jewish and Christian, in various centers of learning in Italy. As in the case of more
comprehensive forms of thought and expression, such as philosophy and poetry,
where scholarly understanding of the huge variety of individual phenomena is
organized by the concept of schools, so too here, in the domain of Kabbalah, we
can distinguish among schools on the basis of their particular features. 11
The delineation of kabbalistic literature by schools is not new; in fact two of the
earliest scholars of Kabbalah, Meier Landauer and Adolph Jellinek, undertook
such efforts. 12 Landauer, however, who wrote in the 1840s and died before his
studies were published, was aware of only some of the most important aspects of
Spanish Kabbalah and did not address the dissemination of this lore in Italy and
Byzantium. Jellinek, who also edited Landauer's studies, noted the importance of
Byzantium as a place where an important kabbalistic book had been written, but
he did not explore the development of Kabbalah in Italy. 13 Thanks to great advances
in the study of Kabbalah during the twentieth century, launched especially by
the late Gershom Scholem and his school, we are in a much better position to
understand the proliferation of kabbalistic phenomena. Even so, Scholem's pre-
liminary studies on the history of Kabbalah outside Spain did not significantly
enlarge awareness of creative movements in Germany, Italy, Byzantium, North
Africa, and Israel.
3. Defining Kabbalah
Before tracing the historical and conceptual developments of kabbalistic tradi-
tions in Italy, we must undertake a more difficult task: an attempt to define the
meaning of the term Kabbalah as a spiritual rather than a historical phenomenon.
This undertaking requires addressing first the more formal aspects of this lore
Kabbalah
and then its conceptual aspects, that is, its content. The term Kabbalah literally
means "that which has been received." In the early occurrences of the term, the
content of the received material had nothing to do with mysticism. However,
besides this more general use, the term designates a long series of mystical
phenomena that recur first in Judaism and later in Christianity. In a more extended
form, as used by traditional Jews, Kabbalah is an esoteric tradition of hoary
antiquity transmitted through the centuries. Believed to have originated either
in the Sinaitic revelation or with such later masters as the second-century Rabbi
Akiva and Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai, this type of Jewish lore was regarded as
both the most sublime and eventually also the most dangerous form of study
found in Judaism. A great variety of literary corpora are included under this
umbrella, stemming from different centuries and consisting of various types of
mystical thought.
However, the use of the term Kabbalah as a designation for a mystical or esoteric
tradition is relatively late. One would be hard put to find it before the eleventh
century, and even during the twelfth century this meaning was exceptional. The
Jewish masters who used it still subscribed to its more widespread meaning —
namely, as referring to the reception of any tradition, and particularly to Jewish
law, Halakhah. For those approaching Jewish mystical literature, the inevitable
question is whether the emergence of the mystical-esoteric meaning of the term
Kabbalah and its dissemination from the beginning of the thirteenth century on
reflect a substantial change in the mystical traditions cultivated by Jews. Does the
absence of an esoteric meaning of this term in late antiquity and the early Middle
Ages imply something about the perception of Jewish mystical forms of thought
during those periods, just as the emergence of this meaning in the High Middle
Ages reflects a new awareness of emerging Jewish mystical concepts? Modern
scholarship on Kabbalah does in fact emphasize that a new phase in Jewish mysti-
cism opened at the end of the twelfth century, which alone should be designated
as Kabbalah, as distinct from earlier forms of Jewish mysticism. This phase was
characterized by a constantly growing mystical literature, reflecting relatively
consistent spiritual concerns and terminology, and a sense of continuity that
often reflected a Scholastic attitude to this discipline. This consistency derived
not only from the study of a specific type of literature, but also from the perceived
continuity of masters and disciples. According to some accounts, Kabbalah was
at times transmitted orally from one generation to another. This claim recurs in
the writings of contemporaries of the early Kabbalists, the so-called Hasidei
Ashkenaz, the pietists of the Rhineland. They, too, claimed to possess an ancient
tradition concerning the secrets of the liturgical texts, and in their writings the use
of the term Kabbalah points to an esoteric tradition. 14
Kabbalah
Thus certain early-thirteenth-century texts from Western Europe emphasize
the status of Jewish mystical literatures, both in the form of Kabbalah and in that
of Ashkenazi Hasidism, as a received lore, transmitted from one generation to
another. For our purposes it is important to know that one of the centers in which
the earlier mystical and magical traditions had arrived in Europe was Italy, either
in the north, Lucca, or in the south, Bari. 15
But beyond this common feature, these two bodies of literature share another
trait. Both are exegetical literatures, although the texts interpreted are not always
the same. The first Kabbalists, like the medieval German Hasidim, were attracted
by the seminal and enigmatic Sefer Yetzirah, by the Heikhalot literature, and by
various liturgical topics. While some Kabbalists were deeply concerned with the
secrets of the commandments and the hidden meaning of the legendary parts of
the Talmud, these topics were less prominent among Hasidei Ashkenaz. 16 To be
sure, the exegetical nature of these mystical texts is paralleled in other forms of
Jewish medieval writing, such as Jewish philosophy. However, unlike these genres,
the texts constituting Kabbalah and the esoteric literature of Hasidei Ashkenaz
and those of R, Nehemiah ben Shlomo of Erfurt, different from the two other
corpora, often mix the exegetical mode with the traditional. As against these spe-
cial blends, the earlier major mystical literary phenomena known as the Heikhalot
literature and Sefer Yetzirah stand as a special category. The earlier texts are not
concerned with the secrets of the canonical texts, nor are their secrets described as
being received from a human teacher as part of a longer tradition. The dominant
feature of the Heikhalot texts is personal epiphanies experienced by the great
masters; long-term transmission is marginal. In contrast, comprehensive secrets
and exegesis are formal traits of medieval Jewish mystical literature.
Conceptually, Kabbalah is far from a unified system even from its inception in
written short fragments in the twelfth century. 17 The only common denominator
of all the major forms of Kabbalah is the emphasis on received tradition. A
deep difference exists between two main modalities in kabbalistic religiosity:
theosophical-theurgical, and prophetic or ecstatic Kabbalah. Those schools devel-
oped during the thirteenth century in different places, aiming at different religious
achievements. The former was concerned much more with the impact on the
divinity — what I call theurgy — which was conceived not as a simple unified entity
but as a complex and dynamic system — what I call theosophy. The latter was much
more concerned with attaining spiritual experiences, designated as prophetic and
redemptive for the Kabbalist. This seminal distinction was already proposed by
Abraham Abulafia, a Kabbalist in the thirteenth century, and has been adopted
and elaborated in modern scholarship. Notwithstanding the conceptual diver-
gences between the two schools, an issue that will be discussed in considerable
•23-
Kabbalah
detail in subsequent chapters, both claim to be Kabbalah, inasmuch as they draw
their views from ancient texts and traditions.
In addition to the claim to the authority of tradition, from time to time
there appears the claim, somewhat similar to the one made in Christian mysti-
cism, that kabbalistic topics were revealed to them in the present. According
to accounts written long after he died, one of the first Kabbalists, R Abraham
ben David of Posquieres, was visited by the prophet Elijah, who was the source
of his esoteric knowledge. However, such claims are rare during the first two
centuries of the theosophical-theurgical schools of Kabbalah. An exception is
the very brief testimony of Rabbi Asher ben David, a Provencal Kabbalist, that
he received in a dream the solution to a quandary regarding the meaning of the
divine name. 18
Claims of paranormal experiences are much more widespread and explicit in
ecstatic Kabbalah. Indeed, in a rich and seminal passage in his Sejer ha-Hesheq,
or Book of Desire, the founder of this school, Abraham Abulafia, lists three
complementary ways of acquiring Kabbalah:
So that you may understand my intention regarding [the meaning of] Qolot
[voices] easily [be-qalut], I shall hand to you the known Qabbalot [kabbalistic
traditions], some of them received by me from mouth to mouth among the
sages of [our] generation; 19 others received from the books named Srfrei
Qabbalah, composed by the ancient sages, the Kabbalists, blessed be their
memory, concerning the wondrous topics; 20 and others bestowed on me by
God, blessed be He, which came to me from ThY 21 in the form of a heavenly
voice [Bat Qol] , these being the higher ['Elyonot] Qabbalot. 22
Written in Sicily in 1289, this passage is perhaps the first statement by a
Kabbalist that some received traditions are of a higher order than others, received
orally or derived from written documents. It seems to me that the three different
channels may be arranged hierarchically, with the oral traditions, referred to
as commonly "known," conceived of as the lowest. Although Abulafia seems
to have been well aware of the importance of the oral traditions in the circle of
Nahmanides' students, he regarded kabbalistic documents as a higher source and
direct revelation as the highest. In this assessment we may assume that Abulafia's
powerful personality came to the fore in the implication that his own revelations,
rather than the known mystical traditions, were higher. This perspective appar-
ently reflects a confrontation with R. Shlomo ben Abraham ibn Adret, representa-
tive of the Catalan theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah, which he regarded as
inferior to his own ecstatic Kabbalah. 23 The superiority of the revealed tradition,
which reaches the mystic in a distinct form, Bat Qol, reflects Abulafia's vision of
•24-
Kabbalah
his Kabbalah as conducive to the hearing of speech, Dibbur. Abulafia believes that
his form of Kabbalah can be obtained more easily, in Hebrew be-qalut, a term that
contains the same consonants as Qabbalot and Bat Qol.
4. Some Characteristics of Kabbalah
Different as the traditional and revelatory aspects of Kabbalah may be, all of them
convey authoritative status upon the content of the various esoteric trends
conceived as Kabbalah. This legitimation was essential to allow for a greater role
or more sublime conception of the content.
But important as the formal traits of Kabbalah may be in its emergence as an
established discipline, complete with descriptions of the channels of its reception
and transmission, its conceptual and experiential content is even more interest-
ing. What common features underlie the conceptual structure of the various
kabbalistic systems? What characterizes all of them as mystical, spiritual, or reli-
gious phenomena? What are the topics transmitted orally, studied from books, or
received during a revelatory experience? Let me suggest the main concerns of the
Kabbalists as mystics and thinkers:
[a] The Kabbalists, like other Jewish mystics before them, strove to live an
intensive religious life and to encourage others to do so. 24 Although the
methods of enhancing religious awareness differed among the various
kabbalistic schools — the combining of letters in ecstatic Kabbalah, the
visualization of colors (mostly during prayer) in the school of R. Joseph
ben Shalom Ashkenazi and R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, various
techniques of mystical intentions when performing the commandments
in yet other schools — all Kabbalists sought to deroutinize ordinary
religious life by challenging or actively disrupting automatized perfor-
mance. By emphasizing the importance of mental concentration and
intention directed to supernal entities, including visualization exercises,
they attenuated routinized performance of the commandments, and
ordinary forms of behavior in general.
[b] This intensification implies a reorganization of spiritual life around
a few religious ideals, which have strong psychological implications.
The need of the Kabbalist to concentrate his thought, to channel his
energy, to visualize colors, to master the complex theosophical maps
during the performance of the rituals led to a much greater emphasis
upon psychological processes than did the practices familiar in rabbini-
cal tradition or even in the Heikhalot literature. In other words, intensi-
fication brought with it greater interiorization of the religious life. This
•25-
Kabbalah
moment is especially important for a type of religiosity that advocates
the importance of the performance of external deeds.
[c] The processes of intensification and interiorization were coupled with
more abstract studies, particularly regarding complex theosophical
structures, but often in matters of Halakhah and occasionally in matters
of philosophy as well. These studies, often preliminary to the more
intensive kabbalistic practices, were intended in part to chart the main
spiritual areas in which the mystics performed their inner exercises. In
other words, in addition to the intensity of the spiritual and emotional
faculties, the Kabbalists also saw mastery of other forms of religious
knowledge and ethical virtuosity as prerequisites for their mystical life.
[d] All these requirements could be fulfilled only by the very few. In addition
to the rather esoteric nature of most forms of Kabbalah, it was also
a very elitist discipline. In some kabbalistic schools, initiation rites
evidently played a role. Although Kabbalah was popularized beginning
in the mid-sixteenth century, influencing the way of life of many Jews
outside the elite, an intensive kabbalistic life remained the prerogative
of the few.
Though shared by most of the Kabbalists, the processes described above can be
understood as occurring along two major lines: one focusing its concerns around
normative practices, the other around exceptional ones. In the former case, the
rabbinic way of life and its mystical implications stood at the center of the
Kabbalist's concerns. Apparently for this reason, a more complex theosophy
emerged, corresponding to the detailed system of the commandments. The elabo-
rate correspondences between human behavior and the inner structure of the
divine are a distinct feature of normative Kabbalah. The commandments became
a vehicle for regulating the processes occurring on high. They were especially
effective when performed with the proper intention, which included cognitive
engagement: knowledge of the correspondences and the spiritual centering of
one's energy on the ritual act and its influence.
On the other hand, ecstatic or prophetic Kabbalah may be considered as one
of the most important examples of exceptionalist Kabbalah, a form of mystical
technique intended to affect the inner human faculties. It is exceptionalist in that
its major vehicle is not the Jewish nomos, but technical exercises unrelated to
halakhic ritual as understood in the rabbinic texts. At least in the writings of the
founder of this school, Abraham Abulafia, the theosophical concept of the divinity
does not inform the technique — that is, no theory of ritualistic correspondences
regulates the mystical activity of the Kabbalist.
•26-
Kabbalah
These two major directions in medieval Kabbalah likewise differed in matters of
theology: Maimonides was the main source of Abulafia's theology, while the theo-
sophical Kabbalists proposed a wide variety of theosophies that posited dynamic
processes within the divine world that could be influenced by performance of
the commandments. Ecstatic Kabbalah involved the cultivation of a more anthro-
pocentric ideal, such as mystical union, combined with the more individualistic
attitude and errant way of life that characterized the ecstatic Kabbalists. While
the theosophical Kabbalists explained the commandments as theurgical tools, the
ecstatics were much more concerned with devices to change their consciousness so
as to prepare it for union with the divine. Although God was conceived as the main
object of the halakhic course of study, the human psyche was the object of a process
of purification attained by combinations of letters, breathing exercises, mental
concentration, and cultivation of states of equanimity.
5. The Beginnings
Kabbalah surfaced at the end of the twelfth century. The first documents to include
clear-cut theosophic doctrines were written in the Languedoc region of southern
France, an area in which intensive study and creation in the domain of Jewish
legalist tradition were then reaching their peak; indeed, the first kabbalistic
theosophies are conspicuously related to details of the Jewish liturgy. However,
important as these first documents may be in the attempt to reconstruct this
decisive stage in the history of Kabbalah, they constitute a marginal literary
phenomenon when compared with the writings composed in other fields of
Jewish speculation. Legalist writings, original philosophical treatises, and trans-
lations of philosophical writings from Arabic are far more voluminous and influ-
ential than the few quires of kabbalistic treatments that emerged from Languedoc.
Moreover, sometime around 1240 Kabbalah seems to have disappeared as a
meaningful phenomenon in southern France.
Although the first phase of the history of Kabbalah as a written literature in
southern France was decisive for subsequent developments, it was Spain that
hosted the more vital phase of medieval Kabbalah. From the first decades of the
thirteenth century, kabbalistic teachings were cultivated in Catalonia, in the two
towns of Gerona and Barcelona. Some of the Geronese Kabbalists were in direct
contact with a major Kabbalist living in Lunel or Posquieres. Although some
scholars assume that this scholar, Rabbi Isaac the Blind, taught some of the
Geronese Kabbalists who came to study with him in Provence, I assume that he
traveled to Spain and disseminated Kabbalah there. 25
We must also allow for the existence of other, independent sources of the
Catalan Kabbalah. An important Geronese Kabbalist, R, Moshe ben Nahman,
•27-
Kabbalah
known as Nahmanides (1197-1270), was a teacher of kabbalistic traditions that
differed conceptually from those of his contemporaries. Much more traditional
than his compatriots, Nahmanides attempted to restrict the dissemination of this
lore to a small group of selected students. He established his own school, consist-
ing of persons who were also halakhic scholars. 26 The rise of Nahmanides'
kabbalistic school in Barcelona followed the disintegration of the Geronese
school, two developments that may be seen as related.
6. Kabbalah in Spain
However, the main creative phase of Kabbalah in Spain was still in the future.
Although the freer and more creative mood of the Geronese Kabbalists was
contained by Nahmanides' traditionalism, a small group of Kabbalists in Castile
during the second half of the thirteenth century produced an unprecedented
number of kabbalistic writings, including the seminal Sefer ha-Zohar. Strongly
exegetical, attributing its secrets to Jewish masters of ancient times, this mystical
work reflects a unique symbolic mode of expression replete with profound insights
concerning the meaning of ritual and the life of the divinity. This collection of
writings, representing a great variety of views, became the third canonical book
in Judaism, after the Bible and the Talmud, inspiring a large number of commen-
tators. The canonization of the Zohar can be seen as reflecting the same process
as the silencing of the Geronese Kabbalah by Nahmanides and, as we shall see,
opposition to Abulafia: an attempt to create a monolithic line of kabbalistic
thought. Even though these three events occurred during different periods and in
different parts of Spain, I regard them all as parts of the deep restructuring of
Spanish Kabbalah, which moved from initial diversity to relative uniformity toward
the end of its existence in the peninsula. Only after the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain, and as a result of the need of the Spanish Kabbalists to confront new
challenges elsewhere, was a more creative phase reached, beginning in the 1520s.
This general outline of the development of Spanish Kabbalah should be
integrated into a wider context. We can distinguish three major forms of
mysticism in the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages. The first of these
is Muslim mysticism, represented by Sufism, Ismailism, and some forms of
philosophical mysticism, the last being best represented by Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl's
influential book Hayy ibn Yuqtan, or The Living Son of the Enlightened. 27 This
phase lasted approximately from the early tenth century to the very beginning of
the thirteenth, when one of the most important Muslim mystics, Ibn 'Arabi of
Murcia, left Spain for the East. During this period we find some forms of Jewish
mysticism represented by masters deeply influenced by Muslim sources, Sufi
or philosophical. There can be no doubt that major Jewish thinkers active in the
Kabbalah
peninsula like R. Bahya ibn Paqudah and R. Solomon ibn Gabirol were acquainted
with mystical concepts and writings stemming from Arabic sources. Although we
cannot deny the influence of earlier Jewish mystical sources, such as the Heikhalot
literature and Sefer Yetzirah, of which there are especially significant traces in the
writings of Ibn Gabirol 28 and Yehudah ha-Levi, 20 the distinctive nature of these
medieval texts owes much to their Arabic sources.
The second phase of mysticism in Spain was the Jewish Kabbalah, which lasted
from the beginning of the thirteenth century until the expulsion of the Jews
in 1492. Though influenced by some elements stemming from the Jewish and
Muslim writings of the first phase, Kabbalah is more closely related to earlier
Jewish sources than to either Muslim or Christian sources. The dominant literary
genres, terms, and concepts of the Kabbalists differ substantially from the world-
views of their predecessors. During the flourishing of Spanish Kabbalah, Muslim
mysticism had already vanished, and Christian mysticism was still inchoate.
The single major exception, the thirteenth-century Catalan author Ramon Llull,
who was the most important Spanish mystic of the entire Middle Ages, reflects
influences of Jewish mysticism in certain issues that are crucial in his system. 30
The termination of Jewish mysticism in the Iberian peninsula with Spain's
expulsion of the Jews marks the beginning of the most creative phase of Christian
mysticism, during the sixteenth century. Kabbalah must therefore be considered
a major contribution not only to Jewish culture but also to the entire history of
mysticism in that country, as well as to European esotericism in general.
Nothing similar is evident in the relations between Jewish and Christian
mysticism in Italy. There, two theologically and phenomenologically divergent,
and at times rival, forms of spirituality coexisted in the same geographical area.
The development of Kabbalah in Italy and elsewhere reflected these different cir-
cumstances: Spanish Kabbalah evolved toward a particularist structure, whereas
in Italy it became more universalist. As we shall see, Kabbalah in Italy displays far
more differentiated conceptual and rhetorical structures, including major litera-
tures exemplifying three major models: the ecstatic, the theurgical-theosophical,
and the magical-Hermetic, 31 whereas in Spain the theosophical-theurgical model
dominated most of the development of Kabbalah.
These two intellectual trajectories met and clashed when they confronted each
other after Kabbalists expelled from Spain in 1492 arrived in Italy.
•29-
ABRAHAM ABULAFIA AND
ECSTATIC KABBALAH
i. A Short Biography of Abulafia
Abraham Abulafia (1240-c. 1292) is the founder of the ecstatic trend of Kabbalah. 1
Born in Saragossa, in Aragon, he was educated by his father, Shmuel, in Tudela
until the latter's death in 1258. In 1260 he left Catalonia for the land of Israel in
search of the mythical river Sambatyon. In the mid-i26os he was in Capua study-
ing Jewish philosophy, especially the Guide of the Perplexed of Rabbi Moshe ben
Maimon (Maimonides). At the end of the 1260s he arrived in Barcelona, and in
1270 he began to study Kabbalah there, perhaps as the result of a revelation. 2 From
1271 to 1273 he was teaching his Kabbalah and his special, mystical understanding
of Maimonides' Guide to some Kabbalists in Castile. At the end of 1273 or early
•30-
Abulafiaand Ecstatic Kabbalah
1274 he left Spain, and for the next five years he attempted to teach his special type
of mysticism in Greece: in Patros, Thebes, and Evripos. In 1279 he returned to Italy
and, after a short period of detention in Trani in the same year, again spent some
months in Capua, where he taught his Kabbalah to four students. In 1280 he made
an unsuccessful effort to meet Pope Nicholas III while the latter was in retreat in
the castle of Soriano, near Rome. When Abulafia arrived at the castle, the pope
suddenly died of apoplexy, and as a result Abulafia was imprisoned for two weeks
in Rome by the Minorite Franciscans. In 1282 he was in Messina, Sicily, whither he
presumably traveled immediately after his release from prison.
Well before his arrival in Sicily, starting in the early 1270s, Abulafia had written
several books in which he described in some detail his peculiar type of Kabbalah,
consisting of a variety of techniques aimed at reaching an ecstatic experience. 3 He
called this experience "prophecy." By the end of the 1270s his literary and propa-
gandistic activities had dramatically intensified. In 1280 alone he wrote two of his
most important books: a large commentary on Maimonides' Guide named Sitrci
Torah, written in Capua, and an important and most influential mystical hand-
book, SeferHayyei ha-'OIam ha-Ba', written in Rome. Between 1279 and 1283 he also
wrote several "prophetic" works, which unfortunately have been lost. 4 Abulafia's
own commentary on these works has, however, survived. It is mainly from these
commentaries that we learn about Abulafia's prophetic claims, as well as of some
messianic aspirations stemming from his revelation in Barcelona in 1270. These
aspirations prompted him to seek an audience with the pope in 1280, following
another major revelation in 1279. It seems that some Jews, apparently fearing the
negative consequences of such an audacious enterprise, distanced themselves
from Abulafia and in some cases even persecuted him. 5
An errant teacher of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, 6 a mystic, a prophet, a
messiah, a preacher of a new Kabbalah to both Jews and Christians, a prolific
writer — these epithets describe Abraham Abulafia at the time of his arrival in
Messina, where he would remain for the rest of his life, producing more than two-
thirds of his extensive writings, which would contribute substantially to both the
Jewish and the Christian cultures. 7
2. A Mystical Interpretation of the Guide
Italy hosted the composition of most of Abulafia's oeuvre. There he also dissemi-
nated Kabbalah, either as a certain mystical interpretation of Maimonides' Guide of
the Perplexed or as a more advanced form of mysticism, which will be described in
chapter 5. With regard to his interpretation of the Guide, we learn from a very
important document, included in a book written in 1286 in Messina:
■31-
Abulafiaand Ecstatic Kabbalah
And I have taught it [the Guide] in several places: in Capua, to four [students] ,
accidentally, but they went on erroneous ways, since they were thoughtless
young men, and I left them. And at Thebes [I had] ten [students] , and none
of them [profited from the teaching] , but they spoiled the two ways, the first
[the plain] and the second [the kabbalistic] . In Evripos four [students] , and
there also was no one who profited, since the thoughts of men are different
from one another, a jbrtiori regarding the depth of wisdom and the Sitrei
Torah, and I did not see one of them who was worthy to receive even the notes
of the truth as it is. And in Rome [I taught the Guide] to two elders of the city,
R Tzidqiah and R. Yeshayah, my allies, blessed be their memory, and they
succeeded in a limited way, and they died, as they were very old. And in
Barcelona two [students], one of them an old one, R Qalonimus, blessed be
his memory, a venerable man, and one young man, learned and intelligent
and very respected, from the aristocracy of the city, whose name was R
Yehudah named Salmon, and he succeeded in a very excellent way. And at
Burgos two [students], a master and [his] student. The name of the master
[was] R Moses Cinfa ... a great man and an honorable scholar. And the
name of the student is R. Shem Tov, also a kind and good young man, but his
youth prevented him from learning, and he did not study it [the Guide] but
only a few external traditions, neither he [R Shem Tov] nor his master
[R Moses]. And in Medinat Shalom [I had] two [students], one of them R
Shemuel the Prophet, who received from me a few traditions, and the second
R Joseph Gikatilla, and he unquestionably succeeded in a wondrous way
concerning what he studied under my guidance, and he added much from
his strength and knowledge, and God was with him. 8
This passage is unique not only in the kabbalistic literature, but also in the
entire literature dealing with the dissemination of the Guide. No philosopher trav-
eled so much and was continuously involved for so long in spreading the views of
Maimonides. I assume that Abulafia was involved in teaching the Guide for at least
seven years, during which he composed three commentaries on this book in a
wide range of places: Catalonia, Castile, Greece, Italy, and Sicily.
Abulafia's list of the places and students he taught is not chronological. For
example, he begins the list with Capua, where he stayed in late 1279 and early
1280, and only later mentions the Greek cities; likewise, his visits in Catalonia and
Castile took place long before his second stays in Italy and Greece. The list also
mentions by name only the students who succeeded, in one way or another, in
following his teaching. Another noteworthy feature is that the successful cases are
presented in the latter part of the list, with only the failures in the first half. Last
•32-
Abulafiaand Ecstatic Kabbalah
but not least, the list ends with the name of R, Joseph Gikatilla, who is presented
as an accomplished disciple. Thus the list is arranged according to a hierarchical
rather than a geographical principle.
Abulafia's observations also signal a difference between his students in Greece
and those in Spain. He labels all his Greek students and most of his Italian ones as
failures. In contrast, all his Spanish students are described as either very or some-
what successful. This conspicuous difference between East and West, with Italy
occupying an intermediate status, presumably reflects cultural differences between
the relatively free and rich spiritual life of Jews in Spain and Jewish life in Byzantium
and Italy. In Spain, interest in Kabbalah was growing at the very time Abulafia
was moving about there, whereas in Italy and Byzantium the medieval forms of
Jewish mysticism were apparently unknown in the late 1270s. Abulafia's peculiar
type of mysticism, combining Maimonidean metaphysics and psychology with
the Ashkenazi mystical practices of combinations of letters, must have seemed
bizarre, and enjoyed a poorer reception, in less developed areas. In the second half
of the thirteenth century, the younger Jewish intelligentsia in Spain were already
seeking a spiritual alternative to Maimonides' rationalism, whereas in Italy the
more classical form of Maimonideanism continued to be taught as late as the end
of the thirteenth century. Thus it is not surprising that Abulafia found fewer but
better students in the West, more numerous but worse ones in the East.
As far as I can determine from my own acquaintance with medieval materials,
the passage above provides a unique example of the itinerary of a wandering
teacher. It covers an unusually large area and at least sixteen years of activity.
Moreover, this teacher indicates that he taught a very specific work, the Guide, on a
scale never equaled either before or afterward. But the passage reveals more than
the uniqueness of Abulafia as an errant teacher and disseminator of the ideas of
the Guide. Here we have testimony about the first attempt to propagate a very
specific, kabbalistic understanding of the Guide. Abulafia mentions "two ways,"
presumably of study. One, we may assume, involves learning the plain meaning of
the Guide by a linear reading of the text according to the order of the chapters; the
second way, according to this passage, involves plumbing the depths of wisdom
and Sitrei Torah, topics that in Abulafia's commentaries on the Guide refer to
kabbalistic matters as he conceived them. Abulafia's testimony that some students
were given the second way of reading the Guide appears to signal the first attempt
to disseminate an esoteric reading of Kabbalah beyond Spain, the stronghold
of this lore in the second part of the thirteenth century.
Abulafia's version of Kabbalah seems to have been the first form of medieval
mysticism propagated in Italy, Sicily, and Greece. Inevitably, Abulafia's type of
Kabbalah was influential in the later development of this lore in Italy and in the
•33-
Abulafiaand Ecstatic Kabbalah
Byzantine Empire. Abulafia's description of his students indicates that at least a
large proportion of them were young persons. At this stage, there was no minimal
age requirement for the study of Kabbalah.
3. The Kabbalah of the Errant Scholars
Abulafia spent most of his life wandering between Catalonia, Castile, Italy, Sicily,
Greece, and the land of Israel. This mobility may reflect in part his own personality
and inclination; but it was also at least a partial result of environmental pressures.
Abulafia was both a charismatic and a disturbing figure. He left Spain in the mid-
1270s, when interest there in the synthesis between Kabbalah and philosophy was
declining and being replaced by a critique of philosophy. The growing emphasis
upon theosophy and theurgy affected even Kabbalists such as Joseph Gikatilla, a
former student of Abulafia, who changed his interest from linguistic to theosoph-
ical Kabbalah. Still later, as we have seen, Abulafia was also persecuted by Jews
who feared repercussions from his messianic claims. These conflicts, potential
and actual, account for Abulafia's years of wandering until he disappeared, some-
time after 1291, in Sicily. This linkage between wandering and an interest in
ecstatic Kabbalah was not limited to Abulafia; at least two other adherents to
ecstatic Kabbalah testify to a wandering existence at the end of the thirteenth
century and the beginning of the fourteenth. One of these was R. Nathan ben
Sa'adyah Harar, the author of Sefer Sha'arei Tzedeq, who was deeply influenced by the
kabbalistic theories of Abulafia. A contemporary of R. Nathan and probably also
his student, R. Isaac of Acre, was also known as wandering from Acre to Catalonia,
Castile, and possibly also North Africa. It seems safe to infer that in this period the
highly individualistic experiences of the ecstatic Kabbalists created tensions with
the Jewish establishment and made an errant existence expedient if not necessary.
In contrast, the great centers of Jewish learning welcomed and supported the
more socially oriented theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists.
4. Messianic Mission and Kabbalistic Propaganda
Abulafia's revelations do not deal solely with idiosyncratic spiritual matters. He
repeatedly describes himself as a messenger to the people of the "Isle of Power" or
the "Isle of Mirror," which in Abulafia's nomenclature means Sicily, where he
wrote one of his most important commentaries on his own prophetic books. Here
I am less interested in the missionary aspects of Abulafia's messianic and apoca-
lyptic revelations than in the propagandistic aspects of his activity. For him
messianism and apocalypticism were not a matter of personal fate and individual
achievement, but much more a message destined to be disseminated in order to
awaken the awareness of the Jews. So, for example, he indicates that God has sent
.34.
Abulafiaand Ecstatic Kabbalah
him to tell "the words of the living God to the Jews, who are circumcised in their
flesh but uncircumcised in their hearts." 9 Abulafia claims that the poor to whom
he has been sent, and for whose sake he has revealed his vision, have not paid due
attention to the "form of his coming" and that they have spoken about him and his
God words that should not be uttered. 10 Then he adds: "God has commanded him
[Abulafia] to speak to the gentiles, those of uncircumcised heart and uncircum-
cised flesh, in His name. And he has done so, and he spoke to them, and they
believed in the message of the Lord. But they did not return to God, because they
relied on their sword and bow, and God has hardened their uncircumcised and
impure hearts." 11
This is a very precious testimony concerning the propagandistic activities of
Abulafia. Indeed, the dissemination of an eschatological-kabbalistic message
to the Jews in general may be understood as part of a turning of ecstatic Kabbalah
to external affairs, and thus signals a change from the politics of Kabbalists before
Abulafia. More or less esoteric, this lore was not intended to be disseminated to
larger audiences even by those among the Geronese Kabbalists, who had adopted
a more exoteric type of writing. None of the Geronese Kabbalists mentioned
discussions with Christians in general, let alone matters of Kabbalah. Clearly,
none of them undertook a propagandistic task of the intensity and amplitude of
Abulafia's. He conceived of himself as a messenger to a nation 12 rather than
only to an elite and traveled from country to country in order to propagate his kab-
balistic views and thus fulfill his messianic mission. Perhaps a more concise
expression of this propagandistic revelation is to be found already in a book writ-
ten in 1280: "You should vivify the multitude by means of the name Yah [a divine
name] and be as a lion who leaps forth in every city and open place." 13
However, much more exceptional is Abulafia's turn to the gentiles as a result of
disappointment in the Jews' lack of receptiveness. That move led him, as we shall
see in the next chapter, even to attempt to meet with the pope.
5. Ecstatic Kabbalah: Spanish or Italian?
One of the important distinctions proposed in Gershom Scholem's Major Trends,
but subsequently almost totally forgotten in Scholem's school, has to do with
what Scholem regarded as two major lines in Spanish ICabbalah. Scholem asserted
that Abulafia's Kabbalah "marks the culminating point in the development of
two opposing schools of thought in Spanish Kabbalism, schools which I would
like to call the ecstatic and the theosophical.'" 4
Scholem's assumption that Abulafia represents one of the two trends in
thirteenth-century Spanish Kabbalism is a modern reverberation of a view that
was already expressed by some Jewish and Christian Kabbalists. However, it seems
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Abulafiaand Ecstatic Kabbalah
that the modern scholar has introduced a qualification that cannot be detected in
the earlier sources: Scholem regards Abulafia as the culmination or embodiment
of a certain school of Spanish Kabbalah. Let us briefly consider this qualification.
Abulafia was born in Aragon and was educated, for significant segments of his
life, in Catalonia. Especially important for our discussion is the fact that he started
his kabbalistic studies and career in Spain. In Barcelona, in the early 1270s, he
commenced his studies of the SeferYetzirah and its twelve commentaries, and it was
then that he experienced what apparently was his first and most influential revela-
tion. 15 However, I doubt whether all these facts are sufficient to characterize
Abulafia as a representative of a Spanish brand of Kabbalah, for several reasons.
The two main sources of the specific structure of ecstatic Kabbalah are
Maimonidean philosophy on the one hand and Ashkenazi mystical techniques
and esotericism on the other. 16 There is some convincing evidence that one of the
aims of these techniques was to attain a prophetic experience. 17 The combination
between the philosophical description of prophecy in Aristotelian terms and the
Ashkenazi techniques and mystical aims, which is a very complex and not always
harmonious task, is the main achievement of Abulafia as a mystical thinker.
However, his studies of the Guide of the Perplexed took place in Capua, near Rome,
with the Italian thinker R. Hillel of Verona long before he engaged in studies of
Kabbalah. 18 Maimonides' metaphysics and psychology became major spiritual
factors in Abulafia's thought; Ashkenazi Hasidism contributed to ecstatic
Kabbalah a vital element that was not accepted by any other theosophical-
theurgical Spanish Kabbalist: applying techniques of combinations of letters as a
means of attaining a paranormal experience. 19 Although we may assume that
Abulafia studied Ashkenazi texts in Spain, 20 those studies were far from typical of
his contemporaries' concerns there. 21 In proposing a synthesis between the views
of the most important Jewish philosopher, who lived in Egypt, and some of the
views of Hasidei Ashkenaz of northern Europe in order to create a form of
Kabbalah, Abulafia performed an audacious move that had scarcely any organic
connection to prevailing Spanish visions of Kabbalah. This idiosyncratic synthesis
is, in my opinion, one of the most important reasons for Abulafia's failure to
disseminate his Kabbalah in Spain, and perhaps also for his leaving the Iberian
peninsula shortly after the beginning of his kabbalistic studies.
In this context is it perhaps significant that one of Abulafia's teachers in matters
of Kabbalah was named R. Barukh Togarmi, 22 namely someone coming from
Turkey, a fact that points to the non-Spanish origin of some of Abulafia's main
sources. Likewise, he highly appreciated another commentary on SeferYetzirah, by a
certain R Isaac of Bedresh, namely Beziers, apparently a Provencal master, whose
combinatory techniques as preserved in Abulafia's writings are particularly close to
•36-
Abulafiaand Ecstatic Kabbalah
those of the Spanish Kabbalist. 2 ' Not only is the epithet "Spanish" doubtful, based
as it is on a formal rather than a conceptual basis, but also the idea of ecstatic
Kabbalah as a culmination of a Spanish school is premature. Scholem was correct
in portraying the Zohar as such a culmination. However, in the case of Abulafia, it is
difficult to see him as summarizing and perfecting elements that were characteris-
tic of Spanish thought. 24 As a Kabbalist Abulafia was present in Spain for only three
to four years, and so far I know of not one single Spanish Kabbalist who was sub-
stantially influenced by ecstatic Kabbalah. 25 Moreover, all of Abulafia's important
writings were composed outside Spain. 26 And finally, Abulafia's Kabbalah was not
only not accepted by the Spanish mystics; in fact it was openly and fiercely rejected
by one influential figure in Spain, R. Shlomo ibn Adret, whose ban of Abulafia was
so effective that it succeeded in wiping out this form of Kabbalah from Spanish soil
and thus shaped to a certain degree the spiritual physiognomy of Spanish Kabbalah.
In sum, not only did the components of ecstatic Kabbalah stem from trends of
thought that emerged outside Spain, but this lore was divorced from the develop-
ments of Spanish Kabbalah and did not affect it. The vehemence of the assault by
an eminent Kabbalist, the late fifteenth-century Rabbi Yehudah Hayyat, who was
expelled from Spain, upon the dissemination of Abulafia's writings in northern
Italy attests to the hostility of the Spanish Kabbalists, who gravitated around the
Zoharic literature, toward ecstatic Kabbalah. 27
A comparative analysis of the phenomenological structure of ecstatic Kabbalah
and Spanish theosophical Kabbalah may help us to see the basis for this hostility
more clearly. The emphasis of Abulafia's Kabbalah upon the centrality of revela-
tion and anomian mystical techniques, its specific eschatological attitude, and its
individualistic approach are drastically different from the spiritual physiognomy
of Spanish Kabbalism. The sources of these characteristics are not only the
idiosyncratic personality of the founder of ecstatic Kabbalah but also the esoteric
material that inspired him. Abulafia referred to his Kabbalah as a prophetic
Kabbalah, as against the inferior, sefirotic one. 28 In slightly different forms, this
distinction was echoed by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Johann Reuchlin. 25
However, instead of speaking about only two types of Spanish Kabbalah, we
would do better to resort to the scheme of two trends in Jewish mysticism, starting
before the thirteenth century. Abulafia was not only the founder of the ecstatic type
of Kabbalism; as mentioned above, he was also the inheritor of mystical and mag-
ical techniques practiced by another, earlier type of Jewish mysticism, the Hasidei
Ashkenaz,' which in turn was shaped by an even earlier type of Jewish ecstatic
literature, the Heikhalot literature. He was influenced by another Ashkenazi
figure, R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, the Prophet of Erfurt, who did not belong to the
group of Hasidei Ashkenaz, but relied on magical and Heikhalot traditions. On
•37-
Abulafiaand Ecstatic Kabbalah
the other side, the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists in Spain inherited both the
theosophical views of Provencal mysticism and much earlier types of theosophical
and theurgical thought found mainly in rabbinic literature. 31 These are the reasons
why I would not describe his Kabbalah as a culmination of earlier developments in
Spain.
6. Ecstatic Kabbalah after Abulafia
The numerous writings of Abraham Abulafia are the cornerstones of ecstatic
Kabbalah; their influence can be detected in many texts, and they were preserved
in a great number of manuscripts. However, very few of them have been printed,
and those editions are replete with mistakes. Several important works written
under the influence of Abulafian Kabbalah perpetuated and expanded the ideas
and mystical techniques elaborated in the works of the master. The most impor-
tant of these works are R. Nathan ben Sa'adyah Harar's Sha'arei Tzedeq, written in
Messina by a disciple of Abulafia sometime before 1290; some of the writings of
R. Isaac of Acre, dating from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries;
the kabbalistic traditions that R. Isaac collected from his master, R. Nathan ben
Sa'adyah; the anonymous Sefer ha-Tzeruf and Sefer Ner 'Elohim, written in the late
thirteenth century; and, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, R. Yehudah
Albotini's Sefer SuIIam ha-'Aliyah. Most of these books were written outside Spain.
Most of these works were composed either in the land of Israel or by authors
who had lived there for a time. 32 Some of these writings reflect the penetration of
Sufic concepts, absent in the writings of Abulafia. For example, the concept of
equanimity [hishtau>u>ut], espoused in Damascus at the end of the thirteenth
century by disciples of Ibn 'Arabi, appears in one of R. Isaac of Acre's works; 33 and
the oral melodies that are part of Abulafia's mystical technique are accompanied
by instrumental music in Sefer Sha'arei Tzedeq, a fact that apparently reflects the Sufic
practice of Sama', or mystical audition, and dikhr, a session of recitation of divine
names. 34
After a long period of resistance to Abulafia's Kabbalah, the Spanish Kabbalists
who arrived in the land of Israel after 1492 moved toward acceptance of its basic
assumptions and toward combining it with the classical theosophical-theurgical
Kabbalah regnant in Spain. Safedian Kabbalists such as R. Moshe Cordovero and
R. Hayyim Vital in the sixteenth century were conspicuously influenced by
Abulafia's views, which were now cited openly as a very high form of Kabbalah. 35
The dissemination of Cordovero's kabbalistic theories by his disciples in popular
printed ethical writings helped some of Abulafia's religious ideals to reach a larger
public and finally to play a formative role in the crystallization of eighteenth-
century Polish Hasidism. 36 Clear traces of Abulafian influence are found in the
•38-
Abulafiaand Ecstatic Kabbalah
writings of one of the main followers of the Gaon of Vilnius, R. Elijah ben Shlomo,
namely the nineteenth-century R. Menahem Mendel of Shklov. 37 More recently,
Abulafia's Kabbalah has received widespread scholarly attention 38 and been printed
and distributed even in the most orthodox Jewish circles. The main person respons-
ible for the printing of thirteen volumes of Abulafia's and his followers' books,
Amnon Gross, intends to facilitate the return of prophecy among Jews today. 39
•39-
3
ABRAHAM ABULAFIA'S
ACTIVITY IN ITALY
i. Abulafia in Rome
Rome played a very important role in the political and spiritual life of the Jews.
The city symbolized both the evil Roman Empire, which destroyed the Jewish
Second Temple, and the headquarters of the religion that later persecuted
Jews more than any other — Christianity. This doubly negative heritage notwith-
standing, in the medieval period Rome remained one of the main centers of
power, regulating aspects of life in countries where many Jews were living.
However, in the thirteenth century Rome was not only a symbol of past destruc-
tion and of present persecutions but also a center of Jewish spiritual creativity.
In addition the city remained related, following some apocalyptic traditions in
•40-
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
Judaism, to eschatological events that were regarded as favorable for Jews and
unfavorable for Christians. 1
In a religious dispute that took place in Barcelona in the early 1260s, the famous
Nahmanides contended, in the context of a certain rabbinic legend concerning the
messiah:
For here it is not stated that he had arrived, only that he was born on the day of
the destruction [of the Temple] ; for was it on the day that Moses was born that
he immediately went to redeem Israel? He arrived only a number of days later,
under the command of the Holy One blessed be He, and [then] said to Pharaoh,
"Let my people go that they may serve Me" [Exodus 7:26]. So, too, when the
end-time arrives the messiah will go to the pope under the command of God
and say, "Let my people go that they may serve Me," and until that time we will
not say regarding him that he arrived, for he is not yet the messiah. 2
Moses' mission to the Pharaoh became the prototype for the future career of the
messiah. According to Nahmanides, the messiah will also have to go to the most
important ruler of his time and demand that he let the Jews leave. By dint of this
typological reading, another aspect of Moses' encounters with the Pharaoh may be
relevant to an understanding of the messiah's mission to Rome: the performance
of miracles. As scholars have pointed out, Abulafia may have been influenced by
Nahmanides' passage, and thus the parallel between the messiah and Moses as
performers of miracles may also have been operative in the consciousness of the
ecstatic Kabbalist. This messianic mission seems to be the background of
Abulafia's intense literary activity and of his arrival in the city in 1280.
In the years 1279 and 1280, the founder of ecstatic Kabbalah composed several
kabbalistic writings, which constitute, as far as we know, the first kabbalistic
books composed in Italy. They consist of three major literary genres:
[a] Prophetic books, namely revelations having eschatological, often mes-
sianic, overtones, are presented as stemming from the Agent Intellect
and addressed to Abulafia. The first of these, Sejer ha-Yashar, was written
in 1279 in Patros, in Greece; but all the others, approximately seven,
were written in Italy. In 1280 he composed Sefer ha-Hayyim, either in
Capua or in Rome. In the same year he wrote in Rome Sefer ha-Hofrarah
and Sefer ha-'Edut. All the other prophetic books were composed in
Sicily, where Abulafia himself composed a commentary on all these
books. Although the prophetic books are now lost, their commentaries
survived, and there we find quotations from the originals, which allow a
reconstruction of their content.
•41-
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
[b] In 1280, before leaving for Rome, Abulafia composed in Capua a
kabbalistic commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed, intended for his
students there. This commentary, Sefer Sitrei Torali, is the last and most
important of three commentaries that he wrote on the Guide and is widely
available in manuscript form. 3 In a commentary on the Guide written six
years earlier, he wrote:
I am today in the city of Phonon, 4 and four precious stones joined
my academy. . . . God bestowed on these four children [his students]
knowledge and intelligence in order to understand every book and sci-
ence, and this is the reason I have brought them closer as far as I could,
and I invented for them the names Daniel, Hananyah, Mishael, and
'Azaryah, and I called the last Zekhariyahu, 5 and they are children with no
deficiency, good-looking and understanding every science and knowing
knowledge, and having the capacity to stand in the palace of the king . . .
and those four children . . . when they come to shelter under the wings of
the Shekhinah, false witnesses . . . attempted to seduce them from the
table of the Lord, the God of Israel, in order not to be nourished from the
splendor of the Shekhinah, 6 at the time when other men consume grass 7
. . . and they came and implored and asked me to interpret the secrets of
the Guide of the Perplexed, together with some secrets of the Torah that are
in my hands, dealing with very profound matters, in order to have a proof
and merit and mouth and recommender in order to extract some wisdom
to which their souls were ardently striving, to know it and comprehend its
essence in order to know their creator. And they implored me very much
to this effect . . . and I, because of my love of them, did not want to refuse
them, and I fulfilled their desire according to their wish, and I composed
this commentary for them and for those similar to them. 8
Thus Abulafia started rather early in his career to teach youngsters,
yeladim, not only according to the linear method, but also according to
the more advanced method of reading the Guide, best exemplified by the
very book he wrote at their request. In fact, many years earlier, around
1273, when he himself was no more than thirty-three, he taught
Gikatilla, a young man aged twenty-five, his advanced method of study-
ing the Guide. In the same period he also taught the Guide to two other
young persons in Spain, R. Shem Tov and R. Yehudah Salmon.
[c] In 1280 Abulafia composed in Rome a kabbalistic handbook, Sefer Hayuei
ha-'Olam ha-Ba', another classic of Kabbalah if we are to judge from the
number of extant manuscripts and quotations from it in other works. 9 In
•42-
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
Rome Abulafia taught the Guide to two old men, R. Tzidqiah and R. Isaiah,
whom he calls his "allies" — an indication that he had some troubles
there — and describes as being successful. 10 R Isaiah of Trani the second
was one of the most important halakhic figures in Italy of that generation.
R Tzidqiah may have been the son of R Benjamin, belonging to the
eminent 'Anav family; a less plausible candidate is the more famous
R Tzidqiah ben Abraham, the author of Sefer Shibbolei ha-Leqet." By any
standards, during the two years or less of his second visit in Italy, Abulafia
was busy indeed, even more so if we remember that he also taught in
Capua and spent some time in Rome trying to gain an audience with Pope
Nicholas III as part of a messianic enterprise. This intensive literary
activity is also related to the fact that in 1280 Abulafia reached the age of
forty, which was regarded as the age when a person attained wisdom. 12
Thus we may safely conclude that Capua and Rome were the first cities in Italy
where ecstatic Kabbalah was taught and where important kabbalistic books were
composed.
2. Abulafia and Nicholas III
Abulafia's overt and determined attempt to meet Pope Nicholas III had messianic
implications. In August 1279, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, he pursued the
pontiff, a member of the Orsini family, to the family's summer residence in the
castle of Soriano da Cimini.
And during the fifth month following Nisan, the eleventh month following
Tishrei, [namely] the month of 'Av, during the tenth year, he [Abulafia]
arrived in Rome. He intended to go before the pope on the eve of Rosh
ha-Shanah. And the pope commanded all the guards of his house, when he
was in Soriano, a city one day's distance from Rome, that should Raziel 13
come to speak with him in the name of Judaism, that they take him immedi-
ately, and that he not see him at all but that he be taken outside the city and
burned alive, and there is the wood, inside the inner gate of the city. And this
matter was made known to Raziel, and he paid no attention to the words of
those who said this, but practiced concentration' 4 and saw visions and wrote
them down, and thus came about this book, which he called Sefer ha-'Edut
[Book of Testimony] , being a testimony on behalf of himself and God, that
he gave his life for the sake of the love of His commandments, being also a
testimony on behalf of God, who rescued him from the hand of his foe. For
on the day that he went before the pope two mouths were born to him, and
when he entered the outer gate of the city a messenger went out to greet him
•43-
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
and informed him that the one who sought to destroy his soul had died the
previous night; he was suddenly smitten by a plague, and on that night he
was slain and died. And Raziel was saved. 15
The Latin sources describing the death of Nicholas III speak unanimously
about an apoplexy, which killed the pope abruptly before a confessor could be
brought. 16 Abulafia was arrested and kept in custody for two weeks. As soon as he
was liberated he left the peninsula for a decade of febrile literary and messianic
activities in Sicily. When reporting the circumstances of his attempt to meet with
the pope, Abulafia does not explain the cause of his sudden death. However, his
account contains traces of a tension between the pope and a messiah; the pontiff
warned the messiah that he would be burned, and the death of the pope is por-
trayed as the reason for the messiah's rescue. What did Abulafia want to achieve by
this encounter? I assume that the answer is complex, and we shall deal with it in
chapter 6. Here let me adduce an interesting passage from the same "prophetic
book" quoted above, the Commentary on Sejer ha-'Edut. Abulafia introduces the brief
statements revealed to him, which constituted parts of the lost original prophetic
book, followed by his commentary. The supernal power, whose identity is the
cosmic power known in Maimonides as the Agent Intellect, is the source of the
revelation to Abulafia, and he refers to himself in the third person:
He said that he was in Rome at that time, and they told him what was to be
done and what was to be said in his name, and that he should tell everyone
that "God is king, and shall stir up the nations," and the retribution of those
who rule instead of Him. And he [the Agent Intellect] informed him
[Abulafia] that he [again Abulafia] was king, and he changed [himself] from
day to day, and his degree was above that of all degrees, for in truth he was
deserving such. But he returned and again made him take an oath when he
was staying in Rome on the river Tiber. . . . And the meaning of his saying
"Rise and lift up the head of my anointed one" refers to the life of the souls.
"And on the New Year and in the Temple" — it is the power of the souls. And
he says, "Anoint him as a king" — anoint him like a king with the power of
all the names. "For I have anointed him as a king over Israel" — over the
communities of Israel, that is, the commandments. 17
It is in Rome — as Abulafia was told according to the plain sense of the
revelation — that the anointment of the king will take place at the New Year, in the
Temple. As we have learned from the same book, Abulafia attempted to see the pope
on the eve of the Jewish New Year. The plain meaning of the attempt to become
messiah and king at the New Year is that when speaking with the pope Abulafia will
.44.
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
fulfill a messianic mission and become the messiah. Was the "temple" no other than
St. Peter's? In any case, Abulafia interprets this plain sense of the revelation allegori-
cally, to point to the emergence of the intellect, which is the spiritual messiah, just as
the person speaking with the pope is the material messiah. 18 The allegorical/
spiritual interpretation of his own revelation is similar to some psychologically
oriented Aristotelian interpretations of the Bible in thirteenth-century Jewish
philosophy, although Abulafia seems to be the only Kabbalist to have composed a
text that would subsequently be interpreted by the author himself. 19 But what is more
interesting for the present context is the consonance with the general cultural trend
in Rome, and I assume in Italy in general, where openness to philosophy stemming
from either Arabic or Scholastic sources was greater than what is known to have
existed among Spanish contemporaries. This consonance between the intellectual
aspect of the Abulafian Kabbalah and the philosophically oriented culture in Italy
and Sicily is surely one of the reasons for the relative success of Abulafia in Italy, and
much less in Provence, in contrast to his total marginalization in Spain.
3. A Retrospective Vision
Several years later, sometime between 1286 and 1288, in his Sefer ha-'Ot, one of his
prophetic-messianic writings, recording one of the most interesting apocalypses
ever written in Hebrew, Abulafia addresses the death of the pope in a manner that
is unparalleled in his other writings:
All the rulers of the small Rome,
Their strength has failed and diminished.
Its validity is from the day of the revelation
Of the Torah and further, and there is no
Ruler over His tribes.
Demons come to kill,
But goats were killed. 20
And there were delivered to slaughter nowadays
Both their nobles and humble ones
By the young and the gentle king.
His enemy died in Rome [meriuo met be-Romi]
In his rebellion [be-miryo], by the power of the Name
'El Hay ue-Qayam, because
The Tetragrammaton fought him
By Land and Sea. 21
These enigmatic lines need a lengthier interpretation than is possible here. For
now, let me start with the most conspicuous element: Abulafia speaks about an
.45.
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
enemy who died in Rome, killed by the divine name. Although the pope in fact
died in Soriano, I see no better alternative to identifying the anonymous enemy
than the pontiff. Why his death is translated to Rome becomes clearer when we
analyze the Hebrew: meriuo met be-Romi be-miryo. Meriuo, "his enemy," contains
the same consonants as be-Romi, "in Rome," and as be-miryo, "in his rebellion";
the use of the same four consonants in such proximity inevitably reinforces the
poetic dimension of the description and may account for Abulafia's choice to
name Rome as the crucial city. As for Abulafia's claim in 1288 that the pope died
"by the power of the Name, 'El Hai ue-Qayam," the context implies the agency of
a "gentle and young king," namely a human figure, which is probably Abulafia
himself. The lines immediately following make the connection clear:
Against YHWH and against His messiah
This will be a sign and a proof
And a faithful testimony,
Because we have been victorious, by the name BYT. 21
I interpret the mention of the messiah as a reference to Abulafia himself, who is
also the "gentle king." The death of the enemy is therefore a proof of the power of
God and His messiah; apparently both used the divine name(s) in order to kill an
enemy: the Tetragrammaton and the name 'EHeYeH, present in the last verse by the
name BYT, which amounts in gematria to 21, like 'EHeYeH. Abulafia's prophetic
Kabbalah gravitates around the divine names and their use in order to reach an
ecstatic experience. However, divine names were conceived of as powerful linguis-
tic units, used by prophets who had been sent by God to perform a certain mission,
as we shall see in the following chapters. Therefore, from the perspective of an
older Abulafia, the accidental death of the pope, with whom he wanted to discuss
the meaning of the authentic Judaism, which is the knowledge of the divine names,
has become the proof of his victory. The death of the pope is construed as a con-
frontation between the messiah and the pope, and the former used the divine name
in order to kill the latter. This retrospective account is far from reflecting what in
fact happened in Soriano, even in Abulafia's first report of the affair, quoted above;
it may instead reflect Abulafia's increasing confidence in his messianic mission.
The occurrence of the name 'EHeYeH in connection with the killing of the pope
is reminiscent of another killing performed by a redemptive figure: Moses' killing
of the Egyptian. According to the biblical version, Moses killed the Egyptian who
oppressed the Jews by physical force. However, according to some midrashic
statements, Moses used the divine name in order to perform this act.
Let me return once more to the permutations of letters meriuo, be-Romi, be-miryo.
I find no more permutations of these consonants elsewhere in Abulafia's verse. I
• 4 6-
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
suggest that here Abulafia hints at two divine names that were very important in
his writings: BM and RYW are permutations of the same consonants, and they
stand for namely the name of 42, MB, and the name of 72 units of three letters,
which amount to 216, namely RYW. Indeed, the knowledge of precisely these two
names is described as an important mystical tradition to be handed down in order
to reach a divine revelation. 23
4. ABULAFIA'S ACTIVITY IN SICILY
While in Rome and its vicinity in 1279 and 1280, Abulafia produced conspicuously
influential contributions to Kabbalah, much more so than anything he had written
before. After his release from two weeks' detention in prison at the hands of the
Minorites, he departed for Sicily, where he spent the remaining eleven or so years
of his life. There he produced another 2,000 pages of equally influential work,
some of it still available only in manuscript. This corpus enlarges our understand-
ing of Abulafia's students in Messina and Palermo, and of the reverberations of
Abulafia's writings during the Renaissance.
Abulafia was already in Messina in 1282, as we learn from his commentary on
Sefer 'Ish 'Adam, where he mentions several of his students there: R. Natronay,
R. Abraham ben Shalom, R. Nathan ben Sa'adyah Harar, R. Sa'adyah ben Yitzhaq
Sigilmasi, and R. Jacob ben Abraham. 24 According to Abulafia's account, these
students — with the sole exception of the mysterious Rabbi Natronay — came to
him one after another, apparently attracted by what they had heard from their
acquaintances; thus we may infer that in 1282 he had already been in Messina for
a substantial period. Between 1282 and 1284 it seems that two more students from
Messina joined his study group and then the majority of his students left him.
According to Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, his longest book, composed in Messina in
1285/1286,
Indeed, in this town that I am within now, called Senim, 25 which [actually is]
Messina, I have found six persons, and with me I brought the seventh, from
whom they [the six] have learned in my presence for a very short while. Each
of them has received something from me, more or less, and all of them have
left me, except the one, who is the first, and [he is also] the first reason for
what each and every one of his friends has learned from my mouth. His
name is Rabbi Sa'adyah ben Rabbi Yitzhaq Sigilmasi, blessed be his mem-
ory. He was followed by Rabbi Abraham ben Rabbi Shalom, and was
followed by Rabbi Jacob, his son, and later was followed by Rabbi Yitzhaq
his friend, and he was followed by the friend of his friend . . . and the name
of the seventh was Rabbi Natronay Tzarfati, blessed be his memory. 26
•47-
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
One more person has been added to the earlier list but during the same time one
of the important original figures in Abulafia's group has died: Rabbi Natronay
Tzarfati. However, when Abulafia wrote this passage only one of his seven disci-
ples remained with the master: Rabbi Sa'adyah Sigilmasi, to whom the book is
dedicated. Abulafia continues:
At the beginning of the year 5046 27 God has desired me, and He has brought
me into His holy palace, at the very time when I have completed this book,
which I have composed here in Messina, for the dear, honorable, pleasant,
intelligent, and wise student, who desires to know the essence of the perfect
Torah, Rabbi Sa'adyah. . . . Him I have seen as adhering to me in love; for
him [I wrote this book] in order that he will have it in his hands, as a mem-
ory of what he has studied with me, for oblivion is common. Likewise, while
it will be in his hands, I know that it will be of benefit also to his friends . . .
an intellectual benefit to them as well as to others like them, by most of the
things written in it. 28
The master's unambiguous praise of Rabbi Sa'adyah is surely related to the fact
that he alone was not deterred by some events that had caused his friends to leave.
Abulafia continues:
I know that without [the occurrence of] those events [related] to the fanta-
sies that I saw in my first visions, which have, God be praised, already
passed, those above-mentioned students would not have separated from
me. But those fantasies, which were the reasons for their departure and their
distancing from me, are the very divine reasons that have caused me to stand
as I am and to withstand the ordeals. 29
Abulafia is clearly sensitive to the desertion of his Sicilian students. He stoically
accepts their temporary disengagement but assumes that his devoted follower,
Rabbi Sa'adyah, will impart to them the content of the book that he, Abulafia, has
written. Nourishing this patient attitude was his understanding that a certain
event may appear in a different light to a person who experiences it internally than
it appears to others. I assume that Abulafia was referring to the consequences of
his revelations: whereas he was encouraged by the revelations, the students were
apparently frightened. This calm attitude toward the departure of his students
apparently had a positive result: three years later, in the introduction to his com-
mentary on the Bible, Abulafia again mentions R. Abraham ben Shalom and
R. Nathan ben Sa'adyah, together with R. Sa'adyah Sigilmasi, as being among
those who accept his leadership. 30 Moreover, he dedicated one of his most import-
ant books, Sefer 'Or ha-Sekhel, to R. Abraham and to R. Nathan the Wise. 31 In the
• 4 8-
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
same year, 1289, Abulafia dedicated another of his books, Sefer ha-Hesheq, to a
certain R. Jacob ben Abraham. It therefore follows that Abulafia had been able to
reestablish good relations with at least three of his students. Moreover, in 1287 we
learn of another student who is not mentioned up to that point, nor at any time
afterward. I am referring to Rabbi Shlomo ben Moshe ha-Kohen from the Galilee.
To him Abulafia dedicated his commentary on the priestly blessing, Sefer Shomer
Mitzumh. 32 Thus we may conclude that after a certain crisis, apparently provoked by
strange events connected to his ecstatic experiences, Abulafia was able to attract
again some of his former students. It seems that all of them were living in Messina,
and the fact that he dedicated almost all of the books he wrote in Sicily to these
students indicates that he spent most of the period 1280-1291 in Messina.
Nonetheless, it seems that he also established some sort of relationship
with some of the Jewish inhabitants of Palermo. In 1289 he mentions Rabbi
'Ahituv ben Yitzhaq and Rabbi David his brother, Rabbi Shlomo ben Rabbi
David, and Rabbi Shlomo he-Hazan ben Rabbi Yakhin. 33 With the exception of
R. Shlomo he-Hazan, all the people of Palermo are described as being physicians.
According to the same testimony, these people, like his students in Messina,
followed his guidance. The "physicians" of Palermo are mentioned only very late
during Abulafia's stay in Sicily, probably as late as 1288, and in the same year he
dedicated one book to two of his Messina students, whereas no book of Abulafia's
that we know of was ever dedicated to a disciple from Palermo. This situation
seems rather strange, since all those described as his Palermo students were part
of the Jewish upper class, while none of his Messina students is described as
playing any role in the Jewish community. This imbalance in the politics of book-
dedication reflects, in my opinion, Abulafia's somewhat later acquaintance with
the Palermo group. But there may also be another reason for this reticence.
Toward the end of his life, apparently in the last four years, Abulafia was
involved in a bitter controversy with the greatest authority on Jewish religious law
of Aragonese Jewry, Rabbi Shlomo ben Abraham ibn Adret of Barcelona. This
seminal controversy, neglected in the scholarship of Kabbalah, was apparently
precipitated by a fierce assault on Abulafia's messianic and prophetic claims,
mounted by Ibn Adret in an epistle he sent to a number of people in Palermo. 34
Although there are good reasons to assume that Ibn Adret later wrote to Messina
as well, 35 his decision to open his attack on Abulafia with a letter to Palermo may
be an indication of Abulafia's weaker influence in that city. In any case, the exis-
tence of such an influence seems incontrovertible. This may be learned both from
Abulafia's own testimony and from that of Ibn Adret, who indicates that Abulafia
had a very dangerous impact on several communities in Sicily. 36 This impact is to
be sought on two different levels: Abulafia was a propagandist of his peculiar type
•49-
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
of ecstatic Kabbalah, but also of his claim to be a prophet and messiah. It seems
that it was the latter claim that provoked Ibn Adret's fiery response. If further
documents should reveal more substantial evidence for Abulafia's influence as a
messiah, we would have a better framework for the other messianic documents,
which originated in Sicily.
Let me emphasize a particular trait of Abulafia's group of disciples in Messina,
which in fact is characteristic of the Jewish culture in Sicily in general. Abulafia,
who was an Aragonese Jew, apparently brought with him a French disciple —
Rabbi Natronay. In Messina his most devoted follower was Rabbi Sa'adyah
Sigilmasi, a North African Jew. For a while Abulafia also had a student from the
Galilee, 37 while Rabbi Abraham ben Shalom was originally from Comti, a small
island not far from Malta. This collection of individuals testifies to the variety of
Abulafia's group — a veritable international school of Jewish mysticism, and per-
haps the first one. Abulafia's presence in Sicily transformed the island into more
than just the outstanding place for studying ecstatic Kabbalah. Abulafia sent at
least two of his kabbalistic writings from Sicily to Spain: one letter to Ibn Adret's
colleague in Barcelona, Rabbi Yehudah Salmon, 38 and Sefer ha-'Ot; 39 an epistle to a
certain Rabbi Abraham, who was apparently living in Malta or in Comti; 40 and one
of his books, Sefer Shomer Mitzuah, dedicated to Rabbi Shlomo ha-Kohen, who took
it with him when he left Sicily. 41 Sicily, and more precisely Messina, thus became a
center for the dissemination of a distinctive type of Kabbalah to other regions of
the Mediterranean. This dissemination has much to do with the exoteric vision of
Kabbalah embraced by Abulafia, who asserted explicitly that "despite the fact that
I know that there are many Kabbalists who are not perfect, thinking as they are
that their perfection consists in not revealing a secret issue, I shall care neither
about their thought nor about their blaming me because of the disclosure, since
my view on this is very different from, and even opposite to, theirs." 42
Immediately afterward Abulafia "discloses" the view that the Ma'aseh Merkauah,
the Account of the Chariot, which is one of the most important esoteric topics in
Jewish mysticism, should be understood neither as a visionary experience, as in
the first chapter of Ezekiel, nor as an allegory for metaphysics, as in Maimonides,
but as a matter of a combination of letters of the divine names, namely as a tech-
nique of interpretation, and perhaps also as a mystical technique. The more
exoteric propensity, as expressed here in such explicit terms, would remain a
major characteristic of Kabbalah in Italy.
As mentioned above, R. Shlomo ibn Adret made great efforts to counteract
Abulafia's influence in Sicily. In response the latter distanced himself from theo-
sophical Kabbalah, including its specific formulation in Nahmanides' and thus
Ibn Adret's school, namely that the ten sefirot constitute the very essence of the
•50-
Abulafia's Activity in Italy
divine. Abulafia contended that this was a view worse than the Christian trinitarian
belief, as it assumed the existence of a more complex plurality in the divine realm. 43
The sharp exchange between the two Kabbalists is emblematic of the more
general schism between ecstatic Kabbalah, which remained influential in Italy,
Byzantium, and the land of Israel, and theosophical Kabbalah in Spain. Spanish
Kabbalists were also much more inclined to an esoteric approach to Kabbalah, an
approach rejected by Abulafia and his students. The fact that Abulafia dedicated
most of his books to Sicilian Jews may account for the preservation of many of
these books — some, like Sefer 'Or ha-Sekhel, in quite a number of manuscripts.
Whether Abulafia was able to establish a school that continued the study of his
particular kind of Kabbalah is a question that cannot be answered conclusively.
What is more important is that some of his writings were available at the end of the
fifteenth century, and were interesting enough to attract the attention of several
authors who were instrumental in the emergence of Christian Kabbalah. It seems
that the role of Sicily in the transmission of Abulafia's Kabbalah may be greater
than that of a mere repository of kabbalistic manuscripts. The fact that a convert to
Christianity, Paulus de Heredia, who came from Spain to Sicily, quotes Abulafia
explicitly cannot be explained by his knowledge of Kabbalah while in Spain. 44
Because of Abulafia's stay on the island, it became a center of his Kabbalah in his
lifetime and for two centuries afterward.
• 5 i-
4
ECSTATIC KABBALAH AS AN
EXPERIENTIAL LORE
i. On Abulafia's Mystical Techniques
The nature of Kabbalah is a matter of dispute among scholars. Focusing their
attention on theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah, a preeminently Spanish type of
Kabbalah, some modern scholars have pointed out the "casuistical" nature
of Kabbalah as a whole. 1 Part of this evaluation has to do with the marginalization
of Abulafia's Kabbalah in the scholarship after the mid-1950s, despite Gershom
Scholem's characterization of ecstatic Kabbalah as a major trend. 2 This marginal-
ization is part of a larger phenomenon that can be described as a more theological
approach to Kabbalah, which was conceived of more as a speculative system than
as a full-fledged form of mysticism. This trend especially affected the writings of
Abulafia, some of which were dedicated to describing mystical techniques. 3
•52-
Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
In ancient Jewish mysticism, the Heikhalot literature, there were already articu-
lated forms of mystical techniques, intended to enable the mystical ascent of the
soul to the supernal Chariot, the Merkavah. They included recitations of divine
names and hymns, which apparently induced a peculiar state of consciousness.
Some of these elements were still discernible among the Ashkenazi Hasidic mas-
ters of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, who were also interested in
ecstatic experiences. However, elaborated descriptions of mystical paths seem to
have been an innovation by Abulafia, who included some older elements found in
the Ashkenazi texts he studied, with some details whose origins are still obscure.
Abulafia proposed several mystical techniques, which differed from one another in
several substantial details. In general we may describe his technique as including a
basic element of reciting letters of the divine names in an isolated room 4 while in a
state of mental concentration. 5 So, for example, we read in one of his epistles:
"whoever wants to come into the Temple and enter to its inmost part has to sanctify
himself by the sanctification of the high priest and to study and teach and keep and
do, until he is perfect in his ethical and intellectual attributes, and then he should
seclude himself 6 in order to receive the prophetic influx from the mouth of the
Power [Geuurah] ." 7 Isolation is a necessary preparation for the practice of recitation
of the divine names. Recitation is to be performed in accordance with certain rules,
and the mystic is required to intone the permutations of letters according to the
tonality indicated by the vowels of the permuted consonants. At the same time the
mystic uses a pattern of breathing reminiscent of that used by Hindu Yoga; some of
Abulafia's handbooks explain movements of the head and hands in detail. In one of
these handbooks we find the following recommendations:
Direct your face toward the Name, which is mentioned, and sit as though a
man is standing before you and waiting for you to speak with Him, and He
is ready to answer you concerning whatever you may ask him, and you say,
"Speak," and he answers. . . . And begin then to pronounce, and recite first
"the head of the head" [namely the first combination of letters] , drawing out
the breath and at great ease; and afterward go back as if the one standing
opposite you is answering you, and you yourself answer, changing your
voice, so that the answer not be similar to the question. And do not extend
the answer at all, but say it easily and calmly, and in response recite one
letter of the Name as it actually is. 8
The recitation of the divine name is to be done in a melodious manner, as
we learn already from one of the sources of Abulafia's mystical techniques, the
Ashkenazi Hasidim. R. Eleazar of Worms of writes: "And the prophet was singing
songs to the Holy One, blessed be He, and out of the joy of the commandment 9 the
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Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
speech was coming, as it is said: 'I rejoice at thy word' [Psalms 119:162]. " 10 Singing
songs to God is by no means an extraordinary concept in Judaism. 11 However, the
song mentioned here deals with producing a kind of joy that induces the emer-
gence of prophetic speech, perhaps reflecting a stand closer to some midrashic
images, in which prophets are described as those "who were like an instrument
full of speech." 12 Elsewhere, when resorting to the same talmudic passage in
Sabbath, Rabbi Eleazar describes the enhancing of the glory that is revealed to the
prophets who praise God. 13 These views are similar to Abulafia's. Here is how he
describes "prophecy," a term that is often used in his writings to characterize an
ecstatic experience:
The proof that song indicates the degree of prophecy is that it is the way of
song to make the heart happy by means of tunes, as it is said: "And when the
minstrel played, the spirit of the Lord came upon him" [2 Kings 3:15], for
prophecy does not dwell in him [unless there is] joy. 14 This was already
hinted at in two words appearing at the end of Ecclesiastes [12:13] , where it
is said: "The end of the matter, all being heard: Fear God, and keep his
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." Join yare' [fear] with
shamar [keep] , and you find shir 'amar [say a song] . There is a hint [of this] in
"and they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless
them" [Numbers 6:27] . 15
The last part of this passage is based upon the gematria of 751, by which yare'
shamar = shir 'amar = 'et shemi (my name). Abulafia equates the two verbs, which
denote awe and obedience, with recitation of the song on the one hand and with
the divine name on the other. Blessing stands here for the descent of prophecy, in
a manner that differs from the blessing in theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah. The
nexus between the song, shirah, and prophecy is the culmination of a much longer
discussion, which portrays the Song of Songs as Solomon's last and most sublime
composition, and points to the spiritual attainment of the author and to the mys-
tical death by a kiss. 16 In general, Abulafia assumes that the biblical songs, such
as the songs of Moses and Deborah, point to metaphysical topics and to the
intellectual human faculty. 17 This view seems to be related to a theory found in an
anonymous commentary on the Jewish liturgy, contemporary with Abulafia, to the
effect that the secret of the Song of Songs is the secret of the combination of
letters, a central technique in Abulafia's Kabbalah. 18
It seems that the psychological processes that are characteristic of Abulafia's
techniques are different from parallel processes used in other forms of mysticism
that are similar in some respects to ecstatic Kabbalah. In lieu of attaining tranquil-
lization of the mind by fixing the mental processes on a static point, Abulafia
.54.
Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
proposed contemplation of an object that is changing all the time. In his system,
the release of the consciousness from alien thoughts that may disturb the unitive
or revelatory experiences is obtained by an overactivation of the mental faculty, not
by its fixation. 19
2. Feelings: Pleasure and Death
In Abulafia's writings and those of his followers, there are several descriptions of
bodily feeling during the mystical experience. So, for example, we learn in one of
his first books that "I see that unto Him [God] , the quintessence of all experience
arrives as there comes from Him all the wisdom of logic [and] to every intellective
soul [comes] the pleasure of vision." 20 Pleasure recurs in a much more elaborated
manner in a book composed in Messina in 1285-86: "And you shall feel in yourself
an additional spirit arousing you and passing over your entire body and causing
you pleasure, and it shall seem to you as if balm has been placed upon you, from
your head to your feet, one or more times, and you shall rejoice and enjoy it very
much, with gladness and trembling: gladness to your soul and trembling of your
body, like one who rides rapidly on a horse, who is happy and joyful, while the
horse trembles beneath him." 21
Abulafia conceives physical pleasure as an appropriate feeling and does not
hesitate to express this feeling. He does not suggest anywhere that this image is an
inappropriate one to its subject; on this point, Abulafia departs radically from
Maimonides, who, following Aristotle, sees the apprehension of the divine as the
highest goal of human activity; the joy that accompanies it is only a side effect of
this activity. 22 Abandoning Maimonides in this respect, Abulafia crystallized an
approach, apparently based upon personal experience, that there is an additional
stage to the acquisition of intellectual perfection — namely, that of the pleasure
deriving from the mystical experience.
Maimonides avoided mentioning pleasure as a symptom of a sublime experi-
ence; this reticence may be part of his more transcendental theology, which
separates intellect from matter. His effort to push God beyond the range, though
not beyond the scope, of human understanding in order to safeguard His utmost
purity and spirituality exacted a price in the realms of both epistemology and
feeling: the human intellect, connected as it is with matter, cannot experience the
divine nature, though He is purely intellectual. It was only in the moment of
death that the few elite, Moses and the patriarchs, were able to attain the kiss of
bliss, that is, an experience of God, as we learn from the Guide of the Perplexed. 23
Transcendence has its sublime moments, for which the philosopher often pays in
the form of a very modest noetic attainment of the absolute intellectual realm.
Thus the divine unitive experiences were not conceived as possible in his system,
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Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
and it may well be that Maimonides was deliberately resistant to the Neoplatonic
views on the cleaving of the soul to God and to the Averroistic unitive noetics. 24
Abulafia, however, assumes that the "death by a kiss" of the patriarchs, an experi-
ence attested in hoary antiquity, should be seen in a much more exemplary and
relevant way. He asserts that "whoever's soul is separated from him at the time of
pronouncing [the divine name] will die by a kiss." 25 The prerogative of the few
perfect! in the past, according to the view of Maimonides, was turned into
the immediate achievement of the extreme mystics, available in the present. The
secrets of the Guide of the Perplexed are described as redemptive matters: "all the
secrets to which he pays attention to understand them, by a [concentrated] specu-
lation, and to understand the intention intended by them, and 'he will be redeemed'
[Leviticus 25:31]. " 26
Abulafia construes the verse in Hebrew, Ge'ulah tihieh [0, in his own particular
way: redemption will be attained by means of the thirty-six secrets, hinted at by
the Hebrew letters [0, meaning "him," which amount in gematria to 36. Here the
nexus between secrets and redemption is explicit. A similar position can also be
found in his first commentary on these secrets, Sefer ha-Ge'ulah, where he identifies
the "life of the soul" with the "life ofthe next world," referring to hasagah, compre-
hension. 27 This view occurs also in his second commentary on the Guide, titled Sefer
Hayyei ha-Nefesh, 2S and it should be understood in a noneschatological framework:
the next world is not the realm of existence after death, but the ecstatic experience
in this world, as we learn from one of his most important books, Hayyei ha-'Olam
ha-Ba' (The Life ofthe Next World). We witness here an important instance ofthe
spiritualization of traditional eschatological terminology, interpreted in terms of
imminent individual salvation, a phenomenon well known in the history of mysti-
cism, as in Sufism for example. In this context, another observation of Abulafia's
may be relevant: he states that the number of chapters ofthe Guide is 177, a number
that is equivalent to the numerical value of Gan 'Eden, namely Paradise. 29
3. The Dialogue with the "Angel"
As we have already seen above in the quotation from Sefer ha-Hesheq, when practic-
ing the mystical technique the mystic is to expect someone to speak with him.
Indeed, an angelic revelation in the form of a man is described several times in
Abulafia's writings. So, for example, we read in his untitled book:
"I am the angel ofthe God ofthe hosts, so and so, and it is the secret of Gan
'Eden that amounts to three names, YHWH 'Adonai 'Elohim, whose vowels are
the 'prince of Gan 'Eden' "... and he will tell him: "I am the tree of life, the
Garden in Eden from the East." And he will understand that God has sent to
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Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
him His angel in order to help him by instruction, and to accustom him in the
strong love of the Creator, by announcing to him the truth of the essence of
the tree of life that is within the Garden, and he is the "prince ofGan 'Eden." 30
We may assume that this angel is no other than Gabriel: "The angel who advises
you of the secret of God is named Gabriel, and he speaks from the first verse of the
holy name mentioned by you, and he shows you the wonders of prophecy, for that
is the secret of 'In a vision I will make myself known to him, in a dream I will speak
to him' [Numbers 12:6], for 'vision,' which is the secret of the verse, equals
Gabriel, and 'dream,' whose secret [namely numerical valence] is 'Edo, is Enoch." 31
Here one finds the gematria for Gauriel = 246 = pasuq (verse) = mar'eh (vision) =
medabber (speaks), and these expressions allude to the cosmic Agent Intellect.
Consequently, in the prophetic vision the mystic sees "the figure of a human" by
means of the Agent Intellect, a revelation accompanied by speech. We infer the
connection between this figure, which is the reason for the response, and the
person speaking from Abulafia's own words, who describes this situation as an
answer given by man to himself. It follows that we may reasonably assume that the
human form is no more than a projection of the soul or intellect of the mystic, who
carries on a dialogue with it at the time of pronunciation.
Later in his Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba' Abulafia describes a detail of the technique,
which has an implication for the dialogic situation: "Hold your head evenly, as if it
were on the balance pans of a scale, in the manner in which you would speak with
a man who was as tall as yourself, evenly, face to face." 32 The ontic status of this
figure may be inferred from Abulafia's earlier comments in the same work: "We,
the community of Israel, the congregation of the Lord, know in truth that God,
may He be praised, is neither a body nor a power within the body, nor will He ever
be corporealized. But at the time that the prophet prophesies, his abundance
creates a corporeal intermediary, which is the angel." 33 What is the psychological
mechanism that brings about this dialogical vision? According to his book 'Or
ha-Sekhel, "because man is composed of many powers, it is necessary that he see
the influx in his intellect, and that vision is called by the name Intellectual
Apprehension. And the influx will further jump to the imagination, and require
that the imagination apprehend that which is in its nature to apprehend, and see
in the image of corporeality imagined as spirituality combined with it; and that
force will be called Man or Angel or the like." 34
In a later passage the intellect, namely the "inner speech," is described as
reflecting itself within the imagination just as the soul sees itself within the lower
forms, in what seems to be an appropriation of a Neoplatonic stand: "For every
inner speech is none other than a picture alone, and that is the picture which is
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Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
common to the intellect and the imagination. Therefore, when the soul sees the
forms which are below it, it immediately sees itself depicted therein." 35
Some form of duality is implied here; the higher entity, namely the intellect,
reveals itself within the lower, the imagination, and this seems to be another form
of explaining the nature of prophecy.
4. Devequt: The Mystical Ideal of Ecstatic Kabbalah
Beginning in the early thirteenth century, Kabbalah concerned itself with the ideal
of cleaving to the various divine manifestations, the sefirot, as part of the mystical
performance of the commandments. In the second half of the century, however, the
Spanish Kabbalists became less and less interested in this ideal, emphasizing instead
the paramount importance of the theurgical performance of the commandments as a
mystical way to the divine. With Abulafia, the situation was fundamentally different:
he considered the commandments as allegories for the spiritual processes of the
mystic, rather than as techniques to attain an altered state of consciousness. Whereas
the nomian, halakhic way of life was considered the main mystical avenue open to
all the Jews, the ecstatic Kabbalah of Abulafia and his followers was grounded in
anomian mystical techniques, whose ultimate purpose was to attain a state of union
with the divine, an interpretation of the biblical imperative to cleave to God. 36 This
imperative was reinterpreted by means of Aristotelian epistemology as pointing to
the unitive state of the intellect and the intelligibles during the act of intellection.
Since the intelligible of the mystic is, according to Abulafia, the cosmic active intel-
lect, or God as an intelligizing entity, intelligizing God is tantamount to becoming
identical with Him at the time of intellection. This mystical understanding of Aristotle
influenced the later formulations of the states of unio mystica as elaborated in the
Safedian and Hasidic Polish masters. So, for example, we learn from one of Abulafia's
commentaries on his prophetic writings:
just as his Master 37 who is detached from all matter is called the Knowledge,
the Knower, and the Known, all at the same time, since all three are one in
Him, so shall he, the exalted man, the master of the exalted Name, be called
intellect, while he is actually knowing; then he is also "the known" like his
Master, and then there is no difference between them, except that his Master
has His supreme rank by His own right and not derived from other creatures,
while he is elevated to his rank by the mediation of the creatures. 38
This is a fine example of an expression that can refer to an experience of unio
mystica. Let me adduce now another passage on deuequt. In the 1280s, probably
under the influence of Abulafian thought, R, Joseph Gikatilla formulated a view
that is important for the subsequent development of the ideal of deuequt in Polish
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Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
Hasidism: "the letters of the Tetragrammaton, blessed be He, are all of them intel-
lectual, not sensuous letters, and they point to an existence and to a lasting entity,
and to every entity in the world, and this is the secret meaning of 'and thou who
cleave to the Lord, your God, shall be alive today' [Deuteronomy 4:4] , namely that
those who cleave to the letters of the Tetragrammaton exist and last forever." 39
Abulafia also assumes that the human intellect can become one entity with the
divine mind, an experience that could be designated as mystical union. In my
opinion this development in Abulafia's thought, in comparison with Maimonides'
view, can be explained both by acquaintance with Averroistic views concerning the
possibility of union between the human and the cosmic intellect, which had been
accepted by his teacher in matters of philosophy, R. Hillel of Verona; and by the
mystical experiences Abulafia apparently underwent, which he had understood as
pointing to union with God. So, for example, he argues in one of his commentar-
ies on the Guide of the Perplexed that the actualization of one's intellect will trans-
form it into the entity that caused this process , namely the Agent Intellect, and that
the two will become "one inseparable entity during the time of that act." 40
5. Linguistic and Salvific Prophecy
Unlike all the thirteenth-century Kabbalists in Spain, Abulafia explicitly under-
stood the ultimate goal of his Kabbalah as an attainment of the experience of
prophecy conceived as ecstasy, and consequently built a whole kabbalistic system
to accomplish this. The occurrence of a technique and an experience of ecstasy
to be achieved by that technique can be described as an "ecstatic model," which
involves not only a confession regarding an experience that someone has had, but
also more detailed instructions about how to achieve a certain ideal. When this
model stands at the center of a certain literature, and does not occur as just an
interpretive stand or an isolated discussion, we may speak about ecstatic Kabbalah
or an ecstatic literature. So, for example, we read that "the purpose that is intended
by the ways of Kabbalah is the reception of the prophetic, divine, and intellectual
influx from God, blessed be He, by means of the Agent Intellect, and the causing
of the descent and the blessing by means of the [divine] name upon the individual
and upon the community." 41 This hypervaluation of the intellect is coupled, as we
shall see below, with a simultaneous hypervaluation of speech; language is both a
domain of contemplation, higher than nature, and a technique for attaining a
mystical experience, which has noetic features. In other words, the overactivation
of the intellect and its merging with God are achieved by an overactivation of
language, utilized as a component in a mystical technique. The two extremes
meet, and both are characteristic of Abulafia's strong propensity for actualization
of some of Maimonides' earlier spiritual ideals. This view is expressed at the very
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Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
beginning of Sitrei Torah, where Abulafia characterizes the Guide as "concerned
with the explanation of homologies and the interpretation of prophetic parables."
His own commentary is intended to deal with "religious wisdom, namely the
interpretation of the rationale for the life of the rational soul, and the interpreta-
tion of the worship of God through love. Even if the subject of each of them [the
two books] is unique in itself, everything goes to the same place." 42
In lieu of Maimonides' hermeneutical project, which is focused on natural and
metaphysical frameworks, Abulafia proposes a spiritual interpretation of the
Bible, not only pointing to the true meaning of the Bible, and the proper theology,
but also and more eminently issuing a pressing call for an intense spiritual life.
The intensification of this spiritual life for Abulafia involves an ecstatic path
conceived as inducing prophetic experiences of messianic status:
It is known that the truth of the attainment of reality is the comprehension
of the divine name, and by its means he will comprehend the command-
ments, and they point to the Agent Intellect, 43 because the comprehension
of the Agent Intellect is similar to a candle, which is a "river" 44 that goes out
of 'Eden. ... be careful with the wisdom that emerges from the combination
found in the letters [available] to whoever knows how to combine them,
because this is the goal of the wisdom of the man who understands the
divine name . . . because the comprehension of the Agent Intellect, found
within the 22 holy letters, comprises all the positive and negative command-
ments, and it is the candle that illumines to every man and is "the river that
goes out of 'Eden to water the Garden" [Genesis 2:10], and it shows that
within the 22 letters the comprehension of the name is found, and it is, in its
entirety, [emerging] out of the combinations of letters, and you will find
truly that out of the combination of letters, the known, the knower, and
knowledge [are one] . . . and whoever comprehends the Agent Intellect
gains the life of the world to come and belongs to the secret of the angels of
the living God. 45
The river emerging from Eden and watering the Garden is, quite plausibly, the
intellectual flow that descends from the Agent Intellect, which is separated from
matter and is collected by the human intellect. This process is tantamount to the
phenomenon of prophecy, which reflects, following Maimonides, the Aristotelian
noetic process of representation of the intellectual by means of the imaginative
capacity, and the addition of another Aristotelian view, which assumes the identity
between the knower, the known, and knowledge in the moment of intellection.
Thus, the Garden is envisioned as the human intellect or person, and Eden as
the separated Intellect. The latter is conceived, following medieval Aristotelian
•6o-
Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
cosmology, as being available always to those who know, who in the system of
Abulafia are those who use the technique of combining letters, or the divine
names. This technique is conceived as inducing a transformation that changes the
human into an angelic being, namely into an intellectual entity. 46 Here we have the
explication of the function of language and divine names as means of attaining
union with the Agent Intellect.
The main concern of Abulafian soteriology is less the need to attenuate the
pernicious effects of the external exile, as Maimonides' reconstruction aspires to,
and much more the attempt to obliterate the inner exile. In fact the two approaches
should be seen not as drastically different but, at least insofar as Abulafia's views
are concerned, as building upon the attainment of Maimonides: the philosopher
has provided the framework, a political Weltbild, a philosophy of nature and a Neo-
Aristotelian metaphysics punctuated by some Platonic stands, and a psychology,
which serve as starting points for an intensification of the religious life, which will
culminate in a mystical experience. As Abulafia explains in his Sheua' Netiuot
ha-Torah, this intensification is strongly related to the manipulation of language:
"the true essence of prophecy, its cause, is the 'word' that reaches the prophet
from God by means of the 'perfect language' that subsumes the seventy
languages." 47 The "word" plays the role of the overflow in Maimonides' definition
of prophecy, the perfect language being none other than Maimonides' Agent
Intellect, and this is the case also insofar as the seventy languages are concerned.
It is this emphasis upon the importance of language and of linguistic imagery that
is unique to Abulafia as an interpreter of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. Some
Greek forms of ontology and psychology, reverberating in the Middle Ages, have
been translated into linguistic terms. The process of transformation of intellec-
tion into language, which took place according to Maimonides at the level of the
intrahuman psychology, when the imagination translates abstract concepts into
linguistic units, takes place in Abulafia at the very source of the intellectual realm,
at least insofar as the Agent Intellect is concerned:
You should know that speech alone is not the intellect, but it is the true
faculty of the soul. And in the soul there is no natural faculty that is higher
than the soul, because the separate intellect emanates upon it its intellect,
just as the sun emanates light upon the eye. Speech is a faculty in the soul
similar to the eye in relation to the sun, which generates light upon it. And
the light of the eye is the very light of the sun, and not something different
from it. Likewise, the intellect of the soul is the very emanation of the Agent
Intellect, not something different from it. And speech, as conceptualized 48
in the intellect, and the imaginative faculty and the appetitive faculty and the
•6i-
Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
sensitive, are ruled by it . . . the intellect commands speech, and speech
commands the appetitive [faculty] , and the appetitive the imagination, and
the imagination the senses, and the senses move in order to fulfill the
command of the intellect. 45
Speech is introduced here as a spiritual faculty, not only as a reproduction of
intellectual matters on a corporeal key. Let me turn now to the salvific aspects of the
mystical experience. According to Abulafia in Sefer ha-'Ot: "The Holy God awakens
[heqirz] the hearts of the sleepers and revives the dead by instilling a new spirit in
them, so that they will be resurrected. And whoever will not awaken from his sleep
and who will not be awakened by his [higher] soul, he will sleep an eternal sleep
and will not come to life." 50 Redemption is therefore not only the arrival of the time
of the end but also, and perhaps even more eminently, the arousal of the soul of
man to a spiritual life. This mystical arousal is described here as conditioned by the
advent of the end of time, but it affects the spirit rather than the body of man. In a
rather calculated manner, Abulafia uses expressions related to the resurrection of
the dead, namely the resurrection of the bodies, which is interpreted allegorically as
pointing to the arousal of the soul. Let me adduce here a statement from an anony-
mous kabbalistic writing authored either by Abulafia or by one of his disciples,
which reflects this extreme emphasis on spiritualization: "This points to the know-
ledge of the end [qetz] and the end [qetz] of knowledge, namely to the telos of
man, because he is created in the image of God." 51 The end is a matter not of the
corporeal existence or revival postmortem, but solely of the life of the intellect.
A similar stand is hinted at in 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, where Abulafia states that "the
end of the spirit is spirit," namely that the telos of the spirit of man is the spirit of
God. 52 The knowledge of the end is understood as the telos of human knowledge,
or of the spirit of man, which is either an imitation of God, as man was created in
His image, or stems from God, as is the case of the human spirit. Again, the term
qetz has been understood allegorically as the telos, which points to the spiritual
vision of man, conceived of, implicitly, as more important than the knowledge of
the end, namely apocalyptic knowledge.
Abulafia's view of prophecy as the outcome of using mystical techniques had
an influence on early Hasidism. In his eclectic commentary on the Pentateuch,
'Or ha-Gonuz le-Tzaddiqim, R. Aharon ha-Kohen Perlov of Apta, an important
Hasidic author, wrote at the end of the eighteenth century:
The issue of prophecy is [as follows] : it is impossible, by and large, to proph-
esy suddenly, without a certain preparation and holiness; but if the person
who wants to prepare himself for [the state of] prophecy sanctifies and puri-
fies himself and concentrates mentally and utterly separates himself from the
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Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
delights of this world, and serves the sages, [including] his rabbi, the
prophet — and the disciples who follow the way of prophecy" are called the
sons of the prophets — and when his rabbi, [who is] the prophet, understands
that this disciple is already prepared for [the state of] prophecy, then his
rabbi gives him the topic of the recitations of the holy names, which are keys
to the supernal gate. 54
The terminological and conceptual correspondences between Abulafia's
thought and this text are remarkable; prophecy is an experience that can be
achieved in the present time, by specific techniques taught by a master, who is
described as a prophet, to his disciple. The most important element of the tech-
nique, besides the cathartic preparations, is the pronunciation of divine names.
The topic of prophecy recurs in 'Or ha-Ganuz le-Tzaddiqim several times, where the
degree of prophecy is described as the divestment of corporeality. 55 The divine
spirit too is described as a level that can be reached in the present time, as is
evident in the same author's Sejer Keter Nehora'. The affinities between the Hasidic
master and Abulafia's mystical ideals are significant, pointing to the relevance of
the latter's Kabbalah late in the eighteenth century.
•6 3 -
5
ABRAHAM ABULAFIA'S
HERMENEUTICS
l. A Hermeneutical Generation
One of Abulafia's most original contributions to Jewish mysticism was his innova-
tive and complex hermeneutical system. In Spain his contemporaries were greatly
interested in establishing the details of exegetical techniques for decoding the
Bible, and it was during this time that the fourfold scheme known as Pardes
emerged. Whereas in the Song of Songs pardes means "orchard," here it was used
as an acronym to refer to four senses of the Hebrew Bible: Peshat (plain sense),
Remez (allegorical sense), Derash (homiletic sense), and Sod (secret sense). 1 This
hermeneutical system, unlike Abulafia's more complex one, became widespread
in Kabbalah. But different though the Spanish Kabbalists' symbolic techniques
•6 4 -
ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
were from Abulafia's, their originators have something in common: being much
less concerned with halakhic matters than Nahmanides and most of his followers
were, they belong to what I propose calling innovative Kabbalah, with an approach
that was open to developments rather than concerned with preserving ancient
traditions. In exploring exegetical techniques, all these kabbalistic authors active
between 1270 and 1295 concerned themselves with questions related to both the
infinity of the sacred text and the status of the interpreter.
Abulafia did not share the religious outlook of the theosophical-theurgical
Kabbalists and was not concerned with a symbolic approach. He turned to a much
more linguistically oriented exegesis, deconstructing the biblical text as part of an
attempt to encounter the divine. He developed and articulated a sevenfold exegeti-
cal technique that combined the more classical Jewish methods of interpretation,
philosophical allegory, and a variety of deconstructive devices. Since I have fully
described this sevenfold scheme elsewhere, I shall briefly survey here only the
more "advanced" exegetical techniques against their proper background in early
Jewish mystical literature. 2
2. Interpretive Allegory and the "Path of the Names"
In the writings of Abraham Abulafia and some of his followers, a famous passage
from Nahmanides' introduction to his Commentary on the Pentateuch, about the
biblical text as a continuum of divine names, is quoted several times, always in
positive terms. Nahmanides differentiated between this continuum of names, as a
more sublime though lost path, and the path of the commandments, namely the
biblical text as available today. Abulafia, however, attempted to convert this prin-
ciple into a practical approach to the biblical text. So, for example, he conceived
the divine name of forty-two letters as derived from the first forty-two letters of
Genesis, 3 advancing this "fact" as part of the view that "the entire Torah consists
of divine names of the Holy One, blessed be He, and this is an intelligible proof
for a Kabbalist." 4 Although Abulafia does not explicitly mention Nahmanides'
principle here, his formulation is identical with that of the Geronese Kabbalist.
However, whereas Nahmanides makes no claim that the way in which he describes
the division of the words of the first verse is indeed the original reading according
to the "path of the names," but restricts himself to saying that it is no more than a
guess, Abulafia regards the name of forty-two as already existing in magical and
mystical texts as a divine name. What Nahmanides conceived of as being lost, at
least in part, Abulafia claimed to have retrieved.
Although Nahmanides was acquainted with techniques involving allegorical
interpretation, he was reticent about applying them; 5 in general his approach was
different from Maimonides' naturalistic exegesis. Abulafia combined Maimonidean
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ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
allegorical exegesis with the Nahmanidean theory, namely the allegorical path
with the path of the names. It is clear that he was also acquainted with exegetical
elements independent of these two thinkers, such as those found in Abraham ibn
Ezra's Commentary on the Pentateuch, where some allegories are found; the anony-
mous book of magic Shimmushei Torah, written in the Middle Ages; and Hasidei
Ashkenaz views, in which divine names played an important role in both thought
and magical praxis. 6 Nevertheless, it is obvious from Abulafia's specific formula-
tions that Maimonides and Nahmanides formed the cornerstones of his approach
to the "secrets of the Torah." 7 In a passage from his Commentary on the Pentateuch he
conjoins their approaches to produce a hierarchy:
This knowledge should be taken by the righteous from the Torah according
to its plain sense, in order to perfect his righteousness; but if he wants to
become a pious man, he should approach it by means of the path of the
philosophical-esoteric one. However, if he desires to prophesy, he must
approach it according to the "path of the names," which is the esoteric path,
received from the divine intellect. . . . If you want to be righteous alone, it
will suffice that you follow the paths of the Torah, on the path of its plain
form. If you want to be pious alone, it will suffice that you know the secrets
of the Torah in the manner of the men of inquiry, together with being righ-
teous. However, if you want to be a prophet, it will suffice that you follow the
path of the prophets, whose path was to combine the letters of the entire
Torah and to approach it by the path of the holy names, from its beginning
to the end, as it reached us in a true Kabbalah regarding it [the path] that
"the entire Torah consists of the names of the Holy One, blessed be He,"
together with being perfect in the first two paths. 8
I take the reading of the Torah on its plain sense as standing for Nahmanides'
concept of "the path of the commandments," which according to Abulafia fits the
rank of the tzaddiq. The last path, defined in terms copied from Nahmanides'
introduction to his commentary on the Torah, is the highest one, and although
Nahmanides restricted it to Moses alone, for Abulafia it applies not only to all the
prophets in the past but also to those who strive to become prophets in the pres-
ent. The second, philosophical path, the esoteric one, is absent in Nahmanides,
but very congruent with the perception of Maimonides in the Middle Ages as an
esoteric philosopher. What is important in the very last sentence is the cumulative
and the integrative nature of the prophetic path: in order to become a prophet,
someone must be both an accomplished righteous and a pious man, namely a
philosopher. Philosophical understanding of the Torah, achieved by allegory, is
not a spiritual stage to be transcended by the aspirants to prophecy, but an
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ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
approach to be maintained even when traveling the path of the prophets. As
indicated in this passage, philosophical understanding of the Torah culminates in
attaining metaphysical knowledge. It represents the Maimonidean moment of the
purified understanding of God, which in Abulafia is a condition for union with
Him or for receiving a message from Him. Between the regular religious perfor-
mance of the righteous and mystical moments of prophecy, namely ecstasy, the
contemplative ideal, which involves the allegorical understanding of the Bible,
was given a secure place.
Abulafia's insertion of interpretive allegory between Nahmanides' conservative
path of the commandments and the evasive path of the names is far from a merely
mechanical achievement: as we shall see below, the allegorical approach did not
always remain a separate technique, but was sometimes combined with the path of
the names. However, what seems to be more important is that it illuminated
Abulafia's perception of Nahmanides' paths. So, for example, Abulafia's attitude to
the meaning of the commandments is significantly different from that of the
Geronese master, and much closer to a Maimonidean intellectualist understanding
of the role of Jewish ritual. No less interesting is the fact that philosophical esoteri-
cism thus influenced the other form of Jewish esotericism: the linguistic one.
As proposed above, for Abulafia allegorical understanding of the Torah pre-
cedes prophetic "reading" and is necessary for its attainment. How did the ecstatic
Kabbalist understand the relationship between the two exegetical techniques?
According to a statement in Abulafia's Commentary on the Pentateuch, "when they
[the words of a biblical verse] are taken within the philosophical approach, they
become related to each other in a general manner, though not in all particulars,
whereas according to the methods of ICabbalah not one letter is left without being
used." 9 The move from allegorical to kabbalistic techniques of interpretation
involves, according to Abulafia, a gain in textual understanding; allegory, dealing
with broad concepts, involves understanding the relationship between the various
elements in a biblical pericope in a general way, which implies that some elements
of the text remain beyond the scope of the exegetical allegorical approach.
According to Abulafia, only kabbalistic exegesis completely exhausts the pleni-
tude of the text, fully taking into account all textual idiosyncrasies: "not one letter
is left without being used."
A hyperliteral 10 approach that inspires Abulafia's kabbalistic exegesis. He
regards the letters or the names not as authoritative sources for a certain type of
religious behavior, like Nahmanides' "path of the commandments," nor as a
magical source, as Nahmanides' understanding of the "path of the names" may
have been, but rather as a source of experience. Careful examination of the text, its
dissection into its constitutive letters, and their rearrangement to generate new
•6 7 -
ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
formulas are, at the same time, an extreme dedication to the text and an opportu-
nity for great creative freedom. The constraint of taking everything in the text into
consideration, unlike the allegorical approach, may produce paralyzing moments.
Indeed, in the approach adopted in ecstatic Kabbalah, all the letters of the inter-
preted text must be involved in the new interpretation, but the exegete enjoys great
freedom to manipulate the text, so that it is quite possible to find more than one
way of construing a "kabbalistic interpretation." In a passage found later in the
same commentary, Abulafia writes:
this topic has been expressed in two pericopes, which have been conflated
according to the[ir] plain sense, and commented upon according to the way
of wisdom [namely philosophy], with few additions of kabbalistic words; it
is necessary indeed to return to this [topic] in order to demonstrate all of
this topic also according to the path of the names. However, should we
approach this path according to what we have received from it, [as dealing
with] the forms of the names and the combinations and gematria and
notariqon [acronym] , and those like them from the paths of Kabbalah, we
would not be able to write all these topics that we have received by this
kabbalistic path related to the knowledge of the names, even if all the heav-
ens were parchments, and all the seas ink, and all the reeds pens, and all the
beams fingers, and every moment of our days as long as the years of
Methuselah. Ajbrtiori, there are [kabbalistic] paths that we have not received,
and we do not know anything about them. 11
This rather hyperbolic passage expresses the nature of Kabbalah according
to this Kabbalist; it consists of innumerable techniques of interpretation, each
of them providing a certain comprehensive and detailed interpretation of the
text; this is the reason why even in a kabbalistic commentary on the Torah the
kabbalistic exegete is able to offer only some few of the infinite kabbalistic
interpretations. 12 The Kabbalah based on divine names is therefore not a forgotten
or a fragmentary lore, a closed corpus, but an open field, which is actually expanded
by any additional effort of a Kabbalist to understand the details of a text.
All the kabbalistic exegetical techniques mentioned in this passage are intra-
textual; they exploit the literal resources of the text without importing conceptual-
izations that would create a concatenation between the different words of the text,
as allegorical exegesis does. Eccentric and radical as these forms of exegesis may
be, they nevertheless rely exclusively on the potential inherent in the linguistic
fabric of the text. Whereas the contents found in the allegorical approach can be
exhausted, the kabbalistic ones are conceived of as inexhaustible. From this point
of view Abulafia's approach is closer to the midrashic one, not only in its recurrent
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ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
use of statements found in rabbinic sources, but also in its emphasis on intratex-
tuality. Whereas the midrashic, the allegorical, and the kabbalistic-symbolic
approaches of the other Kabbalists resort to a certain form of textual narrative
transposed onto another set of meanings, because they preserve, in general, the
grammatical functions of the words that constitute the biblical narrative, in
Abulafia's intratextual approach this effect is far from obvious. Instead there is
more reliance on smaller linguistic units, phonemes, detached from external
conceptualization, texts, or plots, to reconstruct the text. This innovative recon-
struction makes it possible to take into account all the original letters, or their
substitutes, as constituents of the fabric of the newly reconstructed text.
So, for example, when dealing with the three angels that revealed themselves to
Abraham, Abulafia mentions that their acts are conspicuous from the scriptures,
and that the issue of prophecy has been already clarified in Maimonides' "Guide of
the Perplexed and other books of wisdom [namely philosophy] in a manner suffi-
cient for those who want to know them, if they will peruse them carefully. And
the men of speculation [namely the philosophers] would apply [all] the names of
the forefathers' 3 to the human intellect, and the rest of the names would refer
to the powers beneath it, some closer to it and some further away. They would
refer everywhere to the Tetragrammaton and other divine names as designations
of the Agent Intellect." 14 The allegoristic interpreters would therefore interpret the
proper names, both those of the forefathers and of God, as pointing to various
forms of the intellect, both human and cosmic, which is separate from matter.
This extratextual interpretation is quite reductive, transforming the particulars
into a general terminology derived from Greek philosophy. From this point of
view, the allegorist may not be able to give an account of why the intellect, or
God, is designated by one biblical term or another. Being part of a universalist
approach — after all, the intellects, the human and the cosmic ones as described in
philosophical sources, are transliteral and transnational entities — they transcend
the peculiar designations found in the scriptural texts.
An even better understanding of the dramas connected to these intellects can
be found in the Averroistic treatises on the intellect, which served as sources of
inspiration for some of Abulafia's own psychological allegories. The biblical text
is understood as drawing its allegorical sense not only from another series of
texts, the philosophical ones, but also from texts originally written in another
language, in many cases stemming from another culture, and oriented to a much
more unified and simplistic axiology. However, what seems to be even more strik-
ing in the allegorical approach as described above is the absence of God: His
names were allegorized as standing for the Agent Intellect, and the whole spiritual
enterprise took the form of an intraintellectual affair, involving the relations
•6 9 -
ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
between the human and the separate intellects. In some cases it is quite difficult to
distinguish between the human and the separate intellects, and sometimes even
between them and God, given the assumption that the realm of the spiritual is
continuous. This view, adopted by Abulafia in some discussions, offers a restricted
domain of intellectual events as recurring in the variety of biblical stories.
This extreme psychologization is "remedied" by the tremendous emphasis on
divine names found in the "path of the names." Although the allegorist speaks
about very important and positive psychological events, he nevertheless deals with
a "lower God," a fact that is transcended by the imposition of the kabbalistic
discourse. In other words, ecstatic Kabbalah's adoption of interpretive allegory
perceived itself not as an alternative to the negative approach of the Jewish
allegorists, but as a higher form of interpretation that forcefully reintroduced the
divine into the spiritual enterprise designated by the Kabbalist as prophecy. In
the same context Abulafia offers an example of allegorical interpretation that
corroborates his argument:
the men of speculation have determined that the name "Lot" is an allegory
for the material intellect and that his two daughters and wife refer to the
material realm. And we are instructed that the angels are the advisors of the
intellect. They are the straight paths that advise the intellect to be saved from
the evil ones, which refer to the limbs [of the body], whose end is to be
consumed in sulfur and heavenly fire — this is the full extent of the parable.
This is in accord with what they say, that the Torah would not have deemed
it important to relate such a matter, even in the event that it actually did
occur, for what is the point of such a story for the man of speculation? 15
The gist of the allegorical approach is to construe a parable, which represents
naturalistic events, in order to retrieve the significance of the biblical story. By
using an axiology based upon the psychomachia, the inner war, or the great jihad
according to the Sufi texts, the allegorist exegete is able to "save" the "embarrass-
ing" canonical text from the semimythological story, and to confer upon it an aura
of philosophical significance. Allegory saves the text from its archaic, plain sense
by assuming that another meaning should be imposed, which stems from a type
of nomenclature alien to the original text. This extratextuality, unlike the midrashic
intertextuality, decodes the canonical text by substituting for the archaic or anti-
quated meaning another one that often violates the original meaning. Abulafia
expresses his uneasiness with the plain sense rather convincingly by presenting
a typology of the attitude to language among philosophers: "It is conceivable in
only one of the three ways: either it is construed in its plain sense, or it may be a
parable, or it occurred to Abraham in a dream in the manner of prophecy." 16
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ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
The alternatives opened by the philosophical approach are different, but the
conclusion is the same: either the plain sense is preserved, but then the philoso-
pher has nothing to learn from such an obsolete story; or it did not happen in the
historical sense, and the canonical text is to be explored for deeper meanings. This
is done either by allegorical interpretation, in the manner we have already seen
above, by transforming the text into a veiled philosophical discourse, which
should be decoded, or by relegating the story to the realm of prophecy or
prophetic dreams. In any case, the Bible on its plain sense is philosophically
insignificant. Let me elaborate more on the last possibility: "And if it is a prophetic
dream, or a prophecy itself, it is worthy of being written in order to instruct the
prophets in the methods of prophecy, and what may be derived from them regard-
ing divine conduct, and in any case the prophet will be able to see in it parables and
enigmas." 17
The last approach, paralleling the path of the names, may provide an insight
into how to reach a prophetic experience, or to know God. Indeed Abulafia asserts
that "the explanation of the Kabbalist is that they are all names and therefore
worthy of being recorded." 18 He is not worried by the obsolete meaning, nor does
he solve the problem by renewing the meaning through substitution. The text is
"elevated" to the highest status, that of becoming a continuum of divine names.
The ecstatic Kabbalist makes quite different claims from those of the allegorist.
Abulafia's approach deals with the last three paths out of seven, and all three may
be characterized as intratextual. As he explains in the Commentary on the Pentateuch,
Indeed, every Kabbalist will invoke the Name in all places it occurs, as
instructed by means of any of the Divine Attribute, because this is true and
right; and this is the reason why it is necessary to inquire into names and to
know of each and every one of them to what Attribute it points, because the
attributes change in accordance with each and every topic. And it is known
that God does not possess at all attributes that will change from one to
another, but that the attributes change in accordance with the nature 19 of the
creatures that are necessarily emanated from them. 20
Whereas the philosophically oriented allegorist will reduce all the plethora of
divine names or proper names to describe one entity understood in its different
states, namely the intellect, the ecstatic Kabbalist claims that different names
correspond to the variety of creatures here below that is emanated from God. On
high, there are no attributes that change — a critical hit at some forms of theo-
sophical Kabbalah — but the different modes of action are projected upon the
divine realm, extrapolating from the differences in the nature of the creatures.
From this vantage point the variety of names is not a case of redundancy, and
■JL-
ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
should not be reduced to the status of synonyms, but respected in their singularity,
in order to discover a higher complexity on high. In any case, what is crucial in this
last quotation is the express need to respect the textual multiplicity of names,
much more than the allegorist was capable of doing it. It is the concern with the
particulars that inspires, at least in principle, the ethos of the "path of the names."
The absoluteness of the details of the text, much more than of its meaning, inspires
the linguistically centered kabbalistic approach, which is to be contrasted even
to kabbalistic exegesis focused on symbolic interpretations of the morphemes.
This concern with intratextuality differs therefore not only from allegoristic extra-
textuality, but also from the midrashic and, very often, the kabbalistic-symbolist
penchants for intertextuality.
3. Allegorical Compositions and Divine Names
Another important use of allegory is the allegorical composition. Unlike the few
instances discussed above, and many others found in Jewish philosophy and some
kabbalistic books, where the interpreted texts were not composed by authors who
envisioned their writings as fraught with allegorical meanings and the interpretive
allegory is, in fact, an imposed allegorization, few Jewish treatises were intended
as allegories from the very beginning.
In the same years when the Zohar was being composed in Spain as a symbolic
text, Abraham Abulafia produced in Italy and Sicily a series of what he called
prophetic writings describing his revelations and interpreting them allegorically.
In my opinion, the allegorical interpretations are only later and insignificant
additions to a text that initially had a literary and conceptual structure and repre-
sent explications of the conceptual elements already coded within the text.
Unfortunately, fuller analysis of the literary and hermeneutical aspects of
Abulafia's activity in this realm remains a desideratum, since most of Abulafia's
"prophetic" books have disappeared, and only his commentaries survive; the
single original prophetic text extant, a poetically oriented treatise named Sefer
ha-'Ot, is not accompanied by a commentary. Nevertheless, it is still possible to
investigate the allegorical composition and the author's interpretation because
some quotations from the original prophecies precede the discussions in the
commentaries.
In an important passage from a lost prophetic writing titled Sefer ha-Melitz, the
Agent Intellect, the human intellect, and the persona of the historical messiah
are all described as the messiah: "the term Mashiyah is equivocal, [designating]
three [different] matters; first and foremost the truly Agent Intellect is called the
Mashiyah . . . and the man who will forcibly bring us out of the exile from under
the rule of the nations due to his contact with the Agent Intellect — he will [also] be
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ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
called Mashiyah. And the material human hylic intellect is called Mashiyah, and is
the redeemer and has influence over the soul and over all elevated spiritual
powers." 21 While the historical person parallels the path of the righteous and the
human intellect the path of the philosophers, the Agent Intellect may stand, as it
does for Maimonides and Abulafia in many cases, for the source of prophecy,
and thus the path of prophecy. The development of the intellect — or the souls —
in this passage is understood in soteriological terms, implying a messianic,
namely redemptive, experience attained by means of the combination of letters
and recitations of divine names.
Let me turn to another instance of allegorical interpretation of a fragment of a
revelation found in a commentary on a prophetic book:
And his saying "and his name I have called Shadday, like My name," [means]
whose secret is Shadday like My name, and [you should] understand all the
intention. Likewise his saying "He is I and I am He," and it cannot be
revealed more explicitly than this. But the secret of the "corporeal name" is
the "messiah of God." Also "Moses will rejoice," which he has made known
to us, and which is the five urges, and I called the corporeal name as well . . .
now Raziel started to contemplate the essence of the messiah, and he found
it and recognized it and its power, and designated it David son of David,
whose secret is Yimelokh . . . the heart of the prophet. 22
This nexus between the body of the messiah, his intellect, and the source of
intellection is accompanied by a string ofgematria'ot: ha-shem ha-gashmi (the mater-
ial or corporeal name) = Mashiyah ha-Shem (the anointed of the name) = yismah
Moshe (Moshe will rejoice) = hamishah yetzarim (five urges) = 703. The first three
phrases contain the three consonants H, Sh, M, as in either ha-shem or MoSheH. The
meaning of this occurrence is quite explicit in a passage of Abulafia in his
Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut: "MoSheH knew God [ha-Shem] by means of the name
[shem], and God [ha-Shem] also knew MoSheH by means of the name [of Moses]." 23
In other words, by means of the recitation of the divine name Moshe knew God,
and God knew him, or, in the terms of the quotation, by means of the name, Moses
became the anointed of God. The words ha-shem ha-^ashmi stand for the name of
Moses and the names of the forefathers that have become, by means of a complex
linguistic transformation, divine names. 24 However, the main gist of the passage
is that in speaking about Moses and his transformation into the messiah, namely
his cleaving to God, Abulafia includes also the forefathers' names, and by doing so
he includes the name of Abraham. If we remember that we have been quoting
from a prophetic book addressed to Abraham, hinted at by the angelico-theophoric
name Raziel — both names amount by gematria to 248 — there can be no doubt
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ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
that the messiah hinted at here is no other than Abraham Abulafia, who claimed to
be a messiah. This is also implied in another series: Dauid ben David = Yimlokh 25 = leu
ha-naui' (the heart of the prophet) = ioo means that the entity named Dauid ben
Dauid will reign. Some few lines earlier in the Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut, God has
mentioned the anointment of Abulafia as a king. Abulafia sees himself as David,
the son of David. I assume that the second David is no other than the Agent
Intellect, and the term "David, the son of David" stands for the union between the
human and the separate intellects. This reading may be corroborated by a third
expression, ue-'Anokhi Hu', namely "and I am He," which amounts to 99, a figure
that for the Kabbalists is practically identical with 100.
Thus, Abulafia's discussion is not just an allegorical composition attempting to
deal with the way in which someone may become a messiah, by reciting divine
names; it should also be understood as revealing, on a more esoteric level, not only
the atemporal "truth" about the spiritual path, understood in soteriological terms,
but also the very temporal path, and perhaps an issue as important for Abulafia as
the atemporal issue, namely that he himself is a messiah and a prophet. Allegory
here is a compositional technique, an interpretive device, but also, and more emi-
nently, an esoteric way of pointing to one's own extraordinary mystical attainment
and his redemptive role in history. Abulafia hints at the mystical attainment in the
phrase dictated to him by God: "He is I and I am He," which should be understood
as pointing to a mystical union between the human and the divine. 26 Allegory may
therefore play a more general role as telling the story of all the souls striving for
spiritual redemption and extreme mystical attainments, as indeed it does in many
of Abulafia's writings. However, in some of his discussions allegory also stands in
a more esoteric way for his own soul.
Spiritual allegory, which is a term that seems to me more appropriate both for
decoding the biblical text and for composing his narrative, may designate a special
application of allegorical techniques for self-expression rather than for more
general exegesis and literary composition dealing with atemporal truths. What is
important in this instance of spiritual allegory, however, is that the mystical path
and the mystical attainment are not expressed solely by intellectualist terminology
drawn from the medieval philosophical patrimony, but also by linguistic devices,
personal and divine names, that are intertwined with more classical forms of
allegory.
4. Natural/Divine Language
The eccentric forms of hermeneutics adopted and developed by Abulafia are part
of a larger process that I propose calling the arcanization of Judaism, which
received an important impetus in the thirteenth century. Within the framework of
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ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
this arcanization, not only the words of the scriptures were conceived of as sacred
and powerful but also their constituent elements, the Hebrew letters. Language
became arcane, and so, too, did all its components. In the sustained contest
between the view of language as conventional and the view of language as natural,
the huge majority of Kabbalists, including all the ecstatic Kabbalists, adopted the
view that language was natural, and even divine, sometimes because it was con-
ceived of as being revealed. So, for example, R, Nathan Harar, who wrote the book
Sha'arei Tzedeq toward the end of the thirteenth century in Messina, asserted:
Anyone who believes in the creation of the world, [if he also] believes that
languages are conventional, [then] he must also believe that they [the lin-
guistic conventions] are of two types: the first is divine, that is, an agreement
between God and Adam; and the second is natural, that is, based on agree-
ment between Adam, Eve, and their children. The second is derived from the
first, and the first was known only to Adam and was not passed on to any of
his offspring except Seth, whom he sired in his image and likeness. And so,
the [esoteric] tradition [ha-Qabbalah] reached Noah. And the confusion of
the tongues during the generation of the dispersion [at the tower of Babel]
occurred only [with regard] to the second type of language, that is, the natu-
ral language. So eventually the [esoteric] tradition [ha-Qabbalah] reached
'Eber and, later, Abraham the Hebrew. Thus we find regarding Sejer Yetzirah,
whose authorship is attributed to Abraham, that the Almighty revealed
Himself to him. And from Abraham the [esoteric] tradition was passed on
to Isaac and then to Jacob and to his sons [the tribal ancestors] . And our
forefathers were in Egypt, but the Kabbalah was in the possession of the
elders of the nation, and the thing remained with them until the birth of
Moses, and he [Moses] was raised in the house of the king, and he learned
many sorts of alien [namely philosophical and scientific] lores, and despite
this fact, because of his predisposition to receive, his mind did not rest
before his father, Amram, gave to him the Kabbalah that was with them
from the forefathers, blessed be their memory. And when it happened that
he went out in the field and secluded himself in the desert, the "Lord of All"
revealed Himself to him in the bush and informed him and taught him and
related to him the most wondrous things, which remained with him until
the [revelatory] event at Sinai, when He introduced him to the inmost secrets
of the science of the letters . . . until he become acquainted with the essence
of these letters, revealed to us from his cognition, and the essence of their
distant roots, and Moses, blessed be his memory, had arranged the Torah as
a continuum of letters, which corresponds to the path of the [divine] names,
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ABULAFIA'S Hermeneutics
which reflects the structure of the letters on high; and [then] he divided the
text [of the Torah] in accordance with the reading of the commandments,
which reflects the essence of the structure of the lower entities. 27
This passage, which though written by his student reflects Abulafia's own view
quite accurately, assumes that the essence of Kabbalah is a tradition dealing with
the nature of language and prophetic revelation at the same time. The knowledge
connected to this ancient tradition diminished, and in the future, with the arrival
of the messiah, it will reemerge. 28 The emphasis on both SeferYetzirah and the role
of Abraham may point to an Abulafian source. Both Kabbalists regarded the
linguistic material as a reality that was superior to the natural domain and as an
easier way to the ecstatic experience than any other medium. 29 More than any of
the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists, these two ecstatic Kabbalists contem-
plated the Hebrew letters of canonical texts and combined them in order to achieve
new revelations.
• 7 6-
6
ESCHATOLOGICAL THEMES
AND DIVINE NAMES IN
ABULAFIA'S KABBALAH
i. Redemption and the Divine Name
Redeemers tend to possess confidence in being already redeemed themselves.
Redemption of the many is the application of their own redemption, as anticipated
by the chosen one. This was the case with Abraham Abulafia. The formulator of a
kabbalistic system focused on manipulations of language and divine names
believed that redemption consisted in the application of the linguistic techniques
on a much broader scale. The new age — historical or psychological — was to be
ushered in, according to Abulafia's view of eschatology, by a change of names,
both divine and human. The theme of the divine name as pivotal for the changes at
the end of time is ubiquitous in Abulafia's writings. Let me adduce some examples
for the importance of this theme.
■IT
ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
There is no redemption but by means of the name of YHWH
And His redemption is not for those who do not request it 1
In accordance with His Name.
This is why I, Zekhariyahu,
The destroyer of the building
And the builder of the destruction,
Have written this small book
By the name of 2 'Adonay the small 3
In order to disclose in it the secret of YHWH the great. 4
Here the composition of Sefer ha-'Ot, probably the most apocalyptic among
Abulafia's prophetic books, is expressly envisioned as aiming to disclose the secret
of the great divine name. However, until then the name 'Adonay is conceived of as
dominant. Theauthor conceives himselfas the revealerofthe great Tetragrammaton,
apparently assumed to have been unknown beforehand. Elsewhere in the same
book, the plene writing of the Tetragrammaton is sufficient for those who know
how to attain a spiritual life for themselves, because it is the source of eternal life. 5
The name that Abulafia chooses to call himself throughout the book, Zekhariyahu,
is a theophoric one, meaning "the one who recites the [divine] name." However, it
is not only the new or renewed knowledge of the divine name, and its preponder-
ance over other names, that is characteristic of the messianic age, but also a change
of divine attributes that will occur and symbolize this coming age. So, for example,
we read in a relatively early book of Abulafia's:
It is known that these two attributes are changed always in accordance with
the nature of creation, turning into each other. And the secret is that the
attribute of mercy always prevails, because the numerical value of YHVH is
26 and that of the name 'Elohim is 86, namely when someone adds 86 to 26,
and when someone writes 26 in its plene form, leaf vav, the concealed [name
of] 86 under the name of 26 will be found. This means that the attribute of
judgment is concealed while that of mercy is revealed. Both are, however,
26, which means that these two attributes are but one attribute. 6
The Hebrew letters, spelled K[a]F and V[a]V, can be combined in another way
to constitute KaV, whose numerical value is 26, namely the gematria of the
Tetragrammaton, and pau, which is numerically equivalent to 86, the gematria
of 'Elohim. 7 The passage points to the concealment of the attribute of judgment,
represented here by the name 'Elohim, which is contained in the plene writing of
the letters of the Tetragrammaton. Thus, the revelation of the divine name of four
letters conveys the preponderance of the attribute of mercy over that of judgment.
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ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
Indeed, it seems to me that Abulafia conceives of the belief in the Tetragrammaton
as characteristic of messianic times. In the Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut he con-
fesses that he has received three revelations, the first of which he calls "belief in
'Elohim"; then a revelation enigmatically described as 'Emunah 'Ahat, "one belief;
and finally "true belief," namely "belief in the special name," 'Emunah be-shem
ha-meyuhad, which is conceived of as "a hidden secret" that is counted in the
"secret of redemption." 8
The mention of the first belief — in the name 'Elohim — and the last — in the
Tetragrammaton — is clear evidence that there is a progression between the two.
The importance that Abulafia attributes to beliefs is remarkably consonant with
the Christian emphasis on faith in general and, much later, forms of devotion to the
name of Jesus in particular. 9 Perhaps this consonance offered Abulafia some reason
to presume that he would find a receptive ear by Pope Nicholas III. This pope was a
patron of the Franciscan sect known as the Minorites, and was no doubt aware of
the adoration that St. Francis felt for the name of Jesus, an adoration that in the
course of time, and already during the lifetime of Abulafia, had become an impor-
tant theological phenomenon. 10 Did Abulafia know about this new element of
Italian Franciscan theology? It is difficult to answer this question. Yet this is pre-
cisely the framework within which it is possible to explain Abulafia's activity among
the Christians of Sicily during the ninth decade of the thirteenth century.
This focusing upon the importance of the divine name in an eschatological con-
text may also shed some light on a further development of kabbalistic messianism,
as represented by Sabbateanism; Sabbatai Tzevi started his strange deeds with the
pronunciation of the divine name." Change of the name is, however, not only a
matter of the reorientation of belief, which is indeed the gist of Abulafia's view, but
also of a more ontological restructuring. In another book Abulafia asserts:
The end of the change [hilluf] of the times has arrived, and so has the end of
the order of the stars, in accordance with the attributes. And the attributes
and names will change, and the languages will be mixed [yeuulbelu], and the
nations and the beliefs will be reshaped, and the diadem of the Israelite
[nation] will return to its former state, and the rank of Jews will be related to
the name of the essence [of God], not to the name of [His] attribute. [Then]
the revealed will become concealed, and the concealed will become revealed,
and the rank of gentiles — men and women — will be lowered, and they will be
vanquished, and the rank of Jews — men and women — will ascend and rise. 12
Though expressed in rather apocalyptic terms, the changes announced in this
passage may be much less external than internal; the main topic is a cultural-
religious upheaval: the Jews will relate now to the essential divine name rather
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ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
than to the name that is an attribute. This is quite a crucial issue, as we have already
seen in the quotation from Sefer ha-'Ot earlier in this chapter, but its significance
may be even deeper when the quotation just above is compared to the earlier ones.
Abulafia here uses the verb yeuulbelu — translated here as "mixed" — to describe a
deep change in the languages. In my opinion, it should be understood as pointing
to the undoing of the diversity of languages launched at the tower of Babel. This
is an "objective" event, as is the disappearance of other opinions, beliefs, and
nations. This "conversion" should be seen as a form of retrieval of a simpler, or
primordial, form of language and religion, when the messianic time arrives. 13 The
term hilluf, translated here as "change," stands for a change that took place in the
past and will be obliterated in the messianic time: "the end of change." Thus
Abulafia assumes that there is a certain correspondence between the divine names,
the divine attributes, the constellations of the stars, and affairs here below:
languages, nations, beliefs. A change of the divine names, namely the emergence
or the reemergence of the Tetragrammaton as dominant in history, means a new
type of relationship between the divine attributes and, as a result, the different
structuring of the celestial constellations, as well as the return of the people of
Israel to their lost grandeur. 14 In Abulafia's rhetoric of his vision of messianism,
there is an important restorative moment.
Abulafia tells us in Sefer ha-'Ot that after he failed to disseminate his teachings
among the Jews he turned to the Christians. 15 After the Christians also rejected his
teachings, he wrote: "Now you of wise heart seek the Lord in your hearts, day and
night. Investigate His Truth and cleave to Him and remember His Name. For His
Name is engraved within the memory, and the Spirit of the Lord speaks, and
within Her is recognized eternal salvation." 16 These words inform us that the path
that Abulafia advocated in vain to the Christians was the contemplation of the
divine name. Last but not least in this context, Abulafia's disciple R. Nathan ben
Sa'adyah Harar, the author of Sefer Sha'arei Tzedeq, claims that
during the time of the Exile, the activity of the names was obliterated, 17 and
prophecy was canceled from Israel, because of hindrance of the attribute of
judgment. This state will go on until the coming of the person whom God
has chosen, and his power will be great because of what has been transmit-
ted to him related to their power, 18 and God will reveal the name to him, and
transmit to him the supernal keys. Then he will stand against the attribute of
judgment . . . and the attribute of mercy will guide him. The supernal
[entity] will become lower, and the lower will become supernal, 19 and the
Tetragrammaton, which has been concealed, will be revealed, and 'Adonay,
which was revealed, 20 will [then] be concealed. Then it will happen to us
•8o-
ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
what has been written: "For they shall all know me from the least of them to
the greatest of them" [Jeremiah 31:33]. Then the natural, philosophical
sciences will be canceled and concealed, because their supernal power was
canceled, but the science of names and letters, which are by now unknown
to us, will be revealed, because their [supernal] power is gradually increas-
ing. Then "the Jews will have light and gladness" [Esther 8:16] , and sadness
and worry will be [the part of] the deniers, and "many of the people of the
land will become Jews" [Esther 8:17], and "your sons and daughter will
prophesy" [Joel3:i]. 21
Changes in the effectiveness of divine names are related to redemptive events.
However, just as in the case of the earlier discussions, the influence of a certain
divine name or another is conceived of as concerning mainly the different forms
of knowledge: either the flourishing of the inferior types of knowledge of alien
extraction during the period of exile, or the return of prophecy in the case of
the Tetragrammaton. In other words, although major upheavals are expected with
the advent of redemption, they are of a more internal, noetic nature, rather than
involving a disruption of the cosmic order. In fact redemption may be summarized
as the revelation of ecstatic Kabbalah, a mystical lore based on letters and names.
Moreover, according to Abulafia, the letters 'aHWY constitute the hidden divine
name, which will be revealed to the messiah. 22 Thus, the return of prophecy is
reported in a statement that also implies the revelation of an unknown divine name. 23
2. Changes of Names of the Mystics
In addition to the revelation of the hidden name of God, Abulafia mentions the
change of the name of the mystic during the mystical experience, an event that also
conveys messianic overtones. For example, we learn that during such an experi-
ence "it will appear to him as if his entire body, from head to foot, has been anointed
with the oil of anointing, and he was 'the anointed of the Lord [Mashiyah YHWH]'
and His emissary, and he will be called 'the angel of the Lord'; his name will be
similar to that of his Master, which is Shadday, who is called Metatron, the prince
[namely the angel] of the divine Face." 24 Thus, just as Enoch received divine names
as part of his apotheosis as Metatron, the human mystic in the present will also
assume new names, in many cases having a theophoric structure. In a prophetic
book composed in the same years as the passage above, Abulafia writes:
And the meaning of his saying "Rise and lift up the head of my anointed one
[meshiyhi]" refers to the life of the souls. "And on the New Year and in the
Temple" — it is the power of the souls. And he says: "Anoint him as a king" —
rejoice him like a king with the power of all the names. "For I have anointed
■8i-
ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
him as a king over Israel" 25 — over the communities [of] Israel, that is, the
commandments. And his saying "and his name I have called Shadday, like
My Name" 26 — whose secret is Shadday like My Name, and understand all
the intention. Likewise his saying "He is I and I am He," and it cannot be
revealed more explicitly than this. But the secret of the "corporeal name" is
the "Messiah of God." Also "Moses will rejoice," which he has made known
to us, and which is the five urges, and I called the corporeal name as well. . . .
now Raziel started to contemplate the essence of the messiah, and he found
it and recognized it and its power and designated it David, the son of David,
whose secret is Yimelokh. 27
This very rich passage cannot be analyzed here in all its complex details; I shall
focus only on the topics relevant to our discussion. 28 First and foremost, the reve-
lation is related to Abulafia, apparently during his stay in Rome in 1280, and the
temple where the messiah will be installed mentioned here may be no other than
St. Peter's. However, I take these spatial and temporal details to present only one
facet of Abulafia's messianism. As he himself puts it, after describing the details
of the revelation, the mythical elements stand for spiritual events. Rosh meshiyhi is
equal in gematria to u-ve-rosh ha-shanah but also to hayyei ha-nefashot, namely the
life of the souls. This is a conspicuously spiritualistic interpretation of messian-
ism. The messianic figure, chosen by God, is taught the secrets of the divine name,
and, using this knowledge, he is able to start his messianic activity. Redemption is
a consequence of the messiah's use of the divine names, just as the instauration of
the messiah is attained by means of the power of the divine names. The revelation
of the divine names to a messianic figure is quite a rare topic. So far as I know, an
explicit instance of such a revelation is found only in Abulafia's writings. Thus, for
example, we read in his epistle Ve-Zot Li-Yhudah: "When I arrived at [the knowledge
of] the names by my loosening of the bonds of the seals, 29 'the Lord of All''
appeared to me and revealed to me His secret and informed me about the time
of the end of the exile and about the time of the beginning of redemption. He
compelled me to prophesy." 31
The nexus between the revelation of the divine name and messianism is there-
fore conspicuous in ecstatic Kabbalah; indeed this issue is the core of the whole
system.' 2 Revealing the divine names is, for Abulafia, tantamount to revealing
the core of the Kabbalah itself, which is quintessential for knowing the secret of
the time of the advent of the messianic era. Indeed, in the same epistle Abulafia
uses the same statement from Sefer Yetzirah to characterize the form of Kabbalah
that he deems the highest, namely prophetic Kabbalah, which aims at teaching
how to actualize the Kabbalists' intellects. 3 ' It is important to dwell upon the
ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
sequence of the events related by Abulafia: his spiritual life, described here
as knowing the names and loosing the bonds, brought him to a subsequent
revelation of the eschatological secrets. A spiritual life is conceived here to be a
condition of redemption, not vice versa.
However, the revelation of the divine name is only one aspect of the relation-
ship between name and redemption. According to other writings of the ecstatic
Kabbalist, the redemptive experience of the messiah is related to his becoming
unified with God or the Agent Intellect, a state understood as a deep spiritual
transformation, described also as the change of the name of the messiah to a
theophoric one. God's theophany at the end of time, described in terms of changes
of both names and attributes, is related to the messiah's apotheosis as part of his
individual transformation. Given that the process of apotheosis is explicitly
described as triggered by a technical use of the divine name, we may conceive the
topic of the divine name as comprising the mode of theophany, the goal of apo-
theosis and the technique to reach it. Or, to express it in other terms: the revelation
of the divine names, which is identical with the future reign of the attribute of
mercy, is an objective event, namely a theophany, which is to be accompanied by
personal redemptions and apotheoses, which consist in a transformation of indi-
viduals into spiritual beings, designated by the theophoric names, by means of
reciting letters of the divine name. This median role of the knowledge of the divine
name is well expressed in 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, where Abulafia writes: "The know-
ledge of the names is a supreme degree over all the human degrees, shared with
the divine degrees, namely that they announce the way that unifies the soul to the
Agent Intellect, in an eternal union, and there is no other way close to it, that may
bring the soul to this wondrous degree." 34
Divine names are conceived of as modes of divine theophanies, techniques
for reaching apotheotic states, and designations for those who have reached
them. Earlier in the same book Abulafia writes, in a way that is not quite clear to
me, about the passage of the name of man from potentia to actu, which causes
the ascent of the man by two degrees. 35 By such an experience someone is able
to both transcend and control nature. Elsewhere in the same treatise we learn
that "the powers 36 of the Special Name 37 are the tools of the Messiah 38 to change
the natures by their means, because its [the name's] powers are above Man, Lion,
Ox, and Eagle. And know that 'eHeYeH is the Special Name, and this is why it
comprises all the living beasts, just as the vowels of the name are tantamount
to Ratzo va-Shov, and I shall give you a sign that all the Chariot is beneath the hands
of Man." 39
The name 'eHeYeH is an important one, and it is worth observing that it is remi-
niscent of Moses' mission to disclose that new name to the people of Israel. This
•8 3 -
ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
changing of nature is in line with some philosophical views in the Middle Ages,
according to which the accomplished man, able to purify his soul and cleave to the
cosmic soul, or the Agent Intellect, is capable of influencing the processes taking
place in nature. Abulafia claims that at the beginning of the millennium according
to the Jewish calendar, namely in 1240, when he was born, the messiah will come,
and he boasts 40 about his knowledge of the divine name. 41 Elsewhere he claims:
"The messiah confesses that his speech and conversation come from the special
name that is with him by nature, and it generates the speech, and actualizes it after
it has been in potentia. And the simpletons do not perceive from where their speech
comes, and they are like an animal that produces a sound that is similar to speech,
but does not understand the nature that is inherent in it." 42
3. Jews, Judaism, and Divine Names
Abulafia's eschatological vision should be understood in a very dynamic manner: it
is not identical with the more popular vision of the final redemption of the
people of Israel, once and forever; rather, it has a place within an undulatory
version of political history, one that sees the ascent and decline of the political
organization of the Jewish nations as part of larger political and military trends. 43
Thus, although a restoration may include the return of the Jews to their land — a
feature of the messianic age often emphasized in many writings on the subject but
totally marginalized by Abulafia — his concern is with the spiritual aspects of this
restoration. Abulafia embraces in some of his discussions a unique understanding
of the essence of Judaism: he understands the significance of the name ofYeHWDaH
as a confession to the power of the divine name. In an untitled ecstatic tract he
writes that in the eschatological time, "The comprehension of the Jew will be the
comprehension of the Name, and this is the way [the name] Shadday was inter-
preted, to the effect that for us the name 'HYH [I shall be] suffices, and likewise
YeHWDY [Jew] , YHW DaY [the name YHW suffices] , 'Ehad 'Ah 'Ehad [One the Brother
One] ; and by the comprehension of YHWH 'Ehad [Tetragrammaton is One] , redemp-
tion [Ge'ulah] will come to us." 44 The word YeHWDY, "Jew," contains the consonants
that also constitute the locution YHW DaY, which means that the three consonants
that constitute the Tetragrammaton are sufficient. A comprehension of the essence
of the Jew is therefore identical with comprehension of the sufficiency of the divine
name. By means of gematria, the consonants of the word YeHWDY amount to 35, as
do the consonants of the expression 'Ehad 'Ah 'Ehad, "One [is the] Brother [of]
One." The two occurrences of 'Ehad amount in gematria to 26, and this addition of
"One" to "One" is the significance of the word 'Ah, "Brother." But 26 is also the
gematria of the consonants of the Tetragrammaton. 45 This comprehension is
salvific, as we may learn not only from the mention of Ge'ulah, "redemption," but
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ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
also from perusal of the larger context (not quoted here) , where the phrase Mashiy ah
YHWH [Messiah of the divine name] is mentioned. In other words, for Abulafia the
eschatological success of the Jews mentioned in the quotation from 'Otzar 'Eden
Ganuz may — though I cannot say must — be understood not only as related to a
political and religious ascent of a certain nation but also as the emergence of a
certain type of comprehension of the centrality of the divine name. Or, to formulate
it more drastically: it would not be surprising to assume that Abulafia understood
the term "Jew" as a metonym for the perfect knowledge of the divine name.
In this context let me introduce a discussion about exile in Egypt and language:
"They exchanged their language for numerous foreign tongues, to the extent that
one does not understand the other, [and are] almost like animals that do not
understand one another and revert to incapacity for verbal communication." 46 The
disappearance of the use of a common language among the Jews, namely the near
oblivion of Hebrew, renders them similar to animals; multiplicity of languages
among the Jews, made real in the exile, also entails a reversion to a state of animal-
ity. The Jews do not possess any special superiority while in the exilic situation,
and I assume, on the basis of the context of this quotation, that they are ruled by
the attribute of judgment. We may assume that the reversal of this situation entails
the return of the attributes of mercy, of one language, and of redemption.
In another attempt to define the nature of the Jews, Abulafia writes in his
Commentary on Sejer ha-Melitz: "the meaning of 'a man of Judah' is that in this name
is exemplified the lesson of Judaism [YahadufJ. We are informed that the aim of
consolation is not arrived at merely by speculation, but rather they must make
whole the integrity of Judaism, that is, confession [hoda'ah] of the knowledge
of the truth and departure from confusion." 47 The author himself explains the
meaning of the term Yahadut here: it implies hoda'ah, namely confession, derived
from a stipulated etymological relationship between the words Yehudah and
hoda'ah. The content of the confession is knowledge of the truth. 48 The nature of
this truth is not explained here, but we may discern its meaning from the passage
that immediately precedes this sentence:
Behold, Raziel intends to inform us of His Exalted Name in accordance with
the hidden path, in order to bring us closer to Him, may His Name be
blessed. Separate [the elements of] the words, for at times a name may con-
sist of even only one letter, which is regarded as if it were one whole word.
This tells us that each letter is a world unto itself, according to the Kabbalah. 49
And he was commanded to illustrate this wondrous Divine Power in order to
instruct us regarding His blessed Name. Invert the [letters of the] word
Raziel, so that it becomes Yisrael. This tells us that Yisrael is Yizrael, just as
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ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
Avraham is Ya'aqov. This is due to the joining of their two attributes, grace
and truth, as it is written: "Thou will show Truth to Ya'aqov [and] Grace to
Avraham" [Micah 7:20] . And in the word Hodu [glorify, confess] is indicated
the [Divine] Name 'HYH because of the two essence-names composed
through the name YH, which are YHW and YHWH, signifying HWD, HWDW,
and YWDW [they will glorify] as well as [the words] ViDWY [confession] ,
HWDW [glorify] and HWD [glory] , [and] WHDY W'WDH [I will glorify] , YHY,
YWDH. Indeed the confession of the Name is the [true] glorification. Thus
HWDW [glorify] in the Name of 'HYH is the HWDAH VaD'aY [confession of
certainty] , and the hidden form [of the Name is] HWDaH. This is sufficient,
just as He is sufficient, may His Name be exalted and raised high. 50
It is clear that according to Abulafia the hoda'ah, confession, which is the
essence of Judaism, is the hoda'ah in the names of God — YH 'HYH YHWH. We may
therefore assume that Yahadut does not refer to the "Jewish people" as a whole, but
rather to a specific religious experience that involves the names of God. This is
also Abulafia's view in his epistle Matzref la-Kesef: "And the Jew who thinks that
because he is Jewish and can trace his ancestry to the seed of Judah, he is of the
seed of royalty, if he does not confess, in truth his similarity with the tribe of Judah
is only one of name. For Judah is etymologically related to confession [hoda'ah]." 51
Abulafia relies on the etymological allusion to Genesis 49:8: Yehudah as deriving
from Yodukhah. Yet whereas there the confession is made by Judah' s brothers to
Judah, Abulafia alters the meaning and has it refer to God. This portrayal of
Judaism is highly reminiscent of his vision of the Kabbalah, namely that its central
goal was the dissemination of the knowledge of the divine name. Similarly, he was
the standard-bearer of the view that the messiah would reveal the true divine name
and the Kabbalah of the Names. Thus, the "Judaism" about which Abulafia
intended to speak to Pope Nicholas III was a religion centered upon the name of
God, and not one centered upon the halakhic structure of Judaism. This definition
of Abulafia's mission would place it outside the realm of the "messianic national-
ism" of Nahmanides 52 and another contemporary of his, Rabbi Yitzhaq ben
Yedayah, and is also different from the proselytizing missionary of Judaism as
proposed by some scholars. 53 Likewise we read in Sefer ha-'Ot, "You, O nation of
God, Supernal Holy Ones who look to the Name [mabitei Shemo] and to the source
of your intelligence, have seen the form ofYHVH within the form of your hearts." 54
It seems to me that the expression "those who look to His Name" is an explanation
of the name Yisra'el, indicated by the words "nation of God." This interpretation
divides the word Yisra'el into yishar, etymologically related to the word yashur, "will
look to," and the word 'el, "God." 55
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ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
Therefore, when describing the messiah as involved in a confrontation with the
pope and prevailing by means of the divine name, as described in chapter 3, we
have an application of a mystical concept of the change of nature by means of the
divine name. However, whereas philosophers under the influence of Avicenna
would offer a totally naturalistic explanation for those changes, namely the union
of the human spiritual faculty to the spiritual power that directs events in the lower
world, Abulafia introduces three additional elements: the messiah, the divine
name, and the will of God.
Moreover, he implicitly regards the messianic achievement as uniting the
three main religious elements in Judaism: the Torah, the Chariot, and the
divine name. I assume that the Chariot, Merkavah, has something to do with
the combination of the letters of the divine names. Ma'aseh Merkavah is numerically
equivalent with Shem ba-shem, 56 while the Torah, as mentioned above, points to
vocalization of the consonants. According to another text, there is a deep affinity
between the Torah and Merkavah. In one of his commentaries on the Guide of
the Perplexed Abulafia advances another interesting gematria: Ma'aseh Merkauah is
tantamount to Gakjal ha-Torah (= 682), namely the sphere or circle of the Torah,
which is to be understood as the combinatory circles that are related to permuting
the letters of the Torah. 57 The Divine Chariot, understood as a complex of
divine names, is the blueprint of the entire Torah, which Kabbalists conceived
of as containing an esoteric level that emerged from reading it as a continuum of
divine names. Perhaps control or the rule over the Chariot has to do with control
over the circles of divine names that are related to the Torah. Thus the knowledge
of the divine name comprises both Torah and Merkauah and is the essence of
the Jew.
Last but not least: the knowledge of the divine names will be used by the mes-
siah in a more magical manner. In the untitled treatise mentioned above, Abulafia
wrote: "and then will be the true time of the Torah, when the Messiah of YHWH
will control all the Chariot, so that he will change the natures by 58 the will of God,
and to him it was said: "Time, two times and a half" [Daniel 12:7]." The focus of
the discussion is overtly messianic: not only is the messiah mentioned but also the
verse from Daniel dealing with the date of redemption. However, redemption is
conceived to consist not only in a noetic or religious state of mind, but also in the
capacity to change the natures, le-shannot ha-teva'im.
Let me attempt to describe the meaning of such a changing of natures. The
recognition of the divine name and of the divine unity is to be complemented by an
additional type of knowledge, that of the vowels between the consonants of the
divine names; the vowels are conceived of as a hidden topic, hinted at by the vocal-
ization of the consonants of the Torah. By using the letters of the divine name with
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ESCHATO LOGICAL THEMES AND DIVINE NAMES
a certain vocalization, namely Holam and Qamatz, which are the vowels of Torah,
the true Torah is achieved, namely a mystical experience.
In other words, Abulafia's Kabbalah consists essentially in understanding,
manipulating, permuting, and experiencing encounters related to the divine
names. These acts represent an intense, vibrant, and very focused type of mysti-
cism, which assumes that an experience of plenitude, understood as salvific, is
inherent in the very essence of the letters of the divine name.
7
ABRAHAM ABULAFIA AND
R. MENAHEM BEN BENJAMIN
Thirteenth-Century Kabbalistic and
Ashkenazi Manuscripts in Italy
i. Abulafia's Studies of Commentaries on Sefer Yetzirah
We have examined Abraham Abulafia's public and literary activities in Italy, which
established ecstatic Kabbalah as one of the leading schools of Jewish thought in
the Apennine peninsula and in Sicily for some centuries. However, there is one
more aspect of Abulafia's activity that had repercussions for the history of
Kabbalah in the peninsula. In my opinion, he not only composed the first kabba-
listic writings in Italy, he also brought there kabbalistic material derived from
other schools flourishing in Spain. We have autobiographical testimony about
this material. In his Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, Abulafia writes: "When I was thirty-one,
in the city of Barcelona, God awakened me from my sleep, and I studied Sefer
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
Yetzirah together with its commentaries." 1 The study of Sefer Yetzirah in itself is not
necessarily indicative of an interest in Kabbalah; however, the mention of the
commentaries, some of which were kabbalistic as we shall see below, shows that
it was in Barcelona that he was introduced to this esoteric lore. We can glean the
identity of those commentaries from another passage from the same book:
these are the names of the commentators to Sefer Yetzirah, whose commentaries
I have seen and whose thoughts concerning it I have examined, according to
the differences [between them] , and they are twelve. The first is the Commentary
on Sefer Yetzirah by R. Sa'adyah Gaon, blessed be the memory of the righteous,
which he composed in Arabic, and it was translated into Hebrew, and his
words combine the way of ethics according to the Torah, while a small part of
them deal with the philosophical way. 2 The second is the commentary of
R. Abraham ben Ezra, blessed be his memory, which for the most part is
philosophy, and a small part of it is concise Kabbalah. 3 The third is [by]
R Dunash ben Tamim, which is in its entirety philosophy. 4 The fourth [is by]
R. Sabbatai Donnolo the physician, and it combines the two topics. 5 The fifth,
[by] the Rabbi R. Jacob of Segovia, blessed be his memory, [is] in its entirety
[constituted of] [mystical] traditions [kullo Qabbalot]. 6 The sixth [is by] the
Rabbi R. Ezra, blessed be his memory, whose [kabbalistic] traditions are cor-
rect but scant. 7 The seventh is [by] R Azriel, whose [kabbalistic] traditions are
esoteric and numerous. 8 The eighth, [by] R. Yehudah he-Hasid the Ashkenazi,
blessed be the memory of the righteous, 9 follows to a small extent the words of
R. Sabbatai the physician. The ninth [is by] the Rabbi R. Eleazar the Ashkenazi,
blessed be his memory, [and] his [esoteric] traditions are hidden [ne'elamot] .
The tenth, [by] the Rabbi R Moses ben Nahman, may the memory of the righ-
teous be blessed, is in its entirety Horayyot, 10 and despite the fact that he was
expert in matters of philosophy, he did not follow it [philosophy] in it [the
commentary] . The eleventh [is by] the Rabbi R. Isaac of Bedresh, may the
memory of the righteous be blessed, and his commentary excels all the others
in disclosing the 231 gates," because he established all the alphabets in accor-
dance with the author of Sefer Yetzirah, and he extracted them to the light
[Hofzia'am le-'or] as a complete alphabet, as it is appropriate, forward wise. 12 . . .
The twelfth [is by] the Rabbi R Barukh, 13 my teacher and master, who also
interpreted it, [and] it is in its entirety [done] in accordance with gematria,
norarilcon [acronym], and combinations of letters, and permutations, together
with all its [Sefer Yetzirah's] ways. I have also heard that the Rabbi R. Eleazar
ha-Darshan Ashkenazi commented upon it, [in accordance with] wondrous
[esoteric] traditions [Peliy'ot mequbbalot] , but it did not reach me until now. 14
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
Some of the commentaries mentioned above are well known, extant, and
printed. Some others, such as those of R. Abraham ibn Ezra and R Yehudah
he-Hasid, are less known, though their existence is attested in other sources. Two
are rare, and their existence is attested most explicitly in the passage above. The
commentaries of R Jacob of Segovia 15 and R Isaac of Bedresh are described here
for the first time, and, in the case of the latter, for the only time in the entire extant
kabbalistic literature. After his studies in Barcelona, Abulafia visited some towns
in Castile, where he attempted to teach his combination of linguistic Kabbalah
and Maimonidean philosophy. Although he had some limited success there, as
the early writings of R. Joseph Gikatilla show, he left Spain forever at the end
of 1273 and, after spending some time in Greece, returned to Italy in 1279.
Five years after his arrival in Capua and Rome, we have the first dated evidence of
the existence of kabbalistic manuscripts in the latter city.
2. Three Thirteenth-Century Kabbalistic Manuscripts from Italy
Let me attempt to describe some of the kabbalistic material found in three kabbalistic
manuscripts copied in Italy, in order to learn more about the first developments in
Kabbalah there beyond what we know about Abraham Abulafia's own literary activity.
I shall restrict my discussion to Rome, the most important center of this lore in the
Apennine peninsula, though still modest in comparison to centers in Spain. Two of
these manuscripts are connected both with Abulafia and with the history of Kabbalah
in Italy beyond the development of ecstatic Kabbalah. The most important evidence
of their influence lies in the fact that they were copied, in most cases in the same
order, in a large number of manuscripts produced in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries and even later. Although the nonkabbalistic aspects of these manuscripts —
halakhic and philosophical for example — also provide details about the intellectual
life of Jews in Rome between 1280 and 1290, we cannot cover that issue here.
The manuscripts that concern us here are Ms. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale
763, and Ms. London, British Library 756, both dating to 1284; and Ms. Parma,
Catalogue de Rossi 1390, copied in 1286. The contents of the three manuscripts
are rather similar, and their analysis may clarify the nature of the first kabbalistic
treatises that were composed outside Italy and were circulated in Italy. Although
the Parma codex was copied later, I shall analyze its contents first because it is the
most comprehensive, containing material salient for my discussion that does not
occur in the Paris and London manuscripts.
Ms. Parma 2784, Catalogue de Rossi 1390
Somewhere in Italy in the first half of 1286, an important manuscript, found now
in the library of Parma, was copied by several scribes, the chief copyist being
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
named Menahem ben Benjamin. 16 Most of the material in the Parma codex deals
with Hasidei Ashkenaz and kabbalistic topics; there are also a few philosophical
treatises. The mystical contents are as follows:
i. Fols. 36b~38b: the shorter version of Sefer Yetzirah 17
2. Fols. 3gb-43b: R Azriel of Gerona's Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah 18
3. Fols. 8oa-83a: an anonymous Ashkenazi Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah 19
4. Fols. 83a-88a: R Dunash ibn Tamim's Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah 20
5. Fols. 88a-gia: a Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah identified by D. Abrams as
written by R Ya'aqov ha-Kohen 21
6. Fols. g^a-gya.: Nahmanides' Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah 22
In addition to these six items, whose relation to Sefer Yetzirah is conspicuous, on
folios 94b~95a this manuscript contains a recipe for the creation of an artificial
man, known later as a Golem, which is also based on Sefer Yetzirah. 23 This text has
been described by Gershom Scholem, who already perceived a similarity between
this recipe and Abraham Abulafia, observing: "These instructions show an unmis-
takable affinity to the yoga practices that have been disseminated among the
Jews chiefly by Abraham Abulafia." 24 Indeed, as I have attempted to show
elsewhere, the unmistakable affinity may point to Abulafia as the real author of the
recipe. We can determine the authorship quite reasonably by comparing the
terminology of the recipe with that in the book composed by Abulafia in Rome,
Sefer Hayyei ha-'OIam ha-Ba'. 25 This comparison is even more compelling given
the fact that the Parma codex also contains a fragment from this very book
(fols. cjia-b) . So far as we know, this fragment is the first copy of a part of Abulafia's
treatise composed in Rome in 1280. Besides the Abulafian recipe for creating a
Golem, the Parma codex contains a passage dealing with the danger of creating a
Golem and discussing at length the importance of Sefer Yetzirah (fols. 92b-g3a). 26
This last text stems from much earlier sources and has nothing to do with
Abulafia's theory; nevertheless, the fact that Sefer Yetzirah is at the center of the
passage seems to be relevant to our discussion here.
The question I would like to address now is whether beyond the two items
strongly related to Abulafia, the concern with Sefer Yetzirah and its commentaries
reflects another affinity to the Kabbalist. Indeed a comparison of the Parma
codex's commentaries on Sefer Yetzirah with Abulafia's list describing his curricu-
lum in Barcelona shows that with the exception of one item, all the commentaries
are identical. And even the single possible exception, the anonymous Ashkenazi
commentary, might be identical with what Abulafia referred to as the commentary
of R Yehudah he-Hasid. 27 Given that Abulafia is the only author who ever men-
tioned so many commentaries on Sefer Yetzirah together, and that he arrived in the
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
same Italian city in which the manuscript was probably copied, there is good
reason to see him as the person who brought this collection of commentaries with
him to Italy in 1279, and supplied his manuscripts to the copyists. This suggestion
is corroborated by the nature of some of the other kabbalistic treatises copied in
this codex: three large portions of the remaining folios contain various writings
dealing with the most important topic in Abulafia's Kabbalah: the nature of the
divine name. R Abraham ben Axelrad of Cologne's Keter Shem Tov, a. synthesis
of Ashkenazi and Geronese esotericism, opens the manuscript (fols. ia~4a);
R Asher ben David's Commentary on the Diuine Name, the first full-scale kabbalistic
commentary on the letters of the Tetragrammaton, is found on folios 25b-34.b. lS
Last but not least, two short compositions on the vocalization of the consonants
of the divine names are found at the end of the manuscript: Sodot ha-Niqqud
(fols. gjb-io^a) and Sod Nequddat Shem ha-Meyyuhad (fols. I03b-i05a). These
treatises are anonymous, but, as Moritz Steinschneider hinted long ago, in their
content they closely resemble some views of Abulafia's disciple R Joseph Gikatilla
in his earlier kabbalistic writings. 29 In 1286 Abulafia praised Gikatilla as a success-
ful Kabbalist who in his early writings had added to Kabbalah from his own
strength. 30 It may be that some of the "additions" that attracted the admiration of
the master are found in the Parma manuscript. In any case, we have here quite a
plausible piece of evidence that Abulafia, who left Spain around 1274, was indeed
acquainted with some productions of his student. If future scholarship conclu-
sively proves the affinity between these two short treatises and Gikatilla, we will
have very strong evidence to support attributing the collection of significant parts
of the codex to Abulafia himself.
In this context, also relevant may be the content of two small anonymous frag-
ments: one dealing with the topic of the Tabernacle (fols. iocjb-iioa), in a manner
reminiscent of the early Gikatilla and the even earlier R. Barukh Togarmi, Abulafia's
master; the other dealing with two angels, Metatron and Sandalphon, and using
gematria'ot similar to those found in the writings of Togarmi (fols. I4b-i5a). 31
Although the Parma manuscript also contains several treatises dealing with theo-
sophical issues that are far from Abulafia's main concerns as an ecstatic mystic,
these are relatively short tracts, whose presence in the codex may reflect the
copyists' use of other manuscripts, such as Ms. London 756 mentioned above, in
addition to that hypothetically possessed by Abulafia; or, alternatively, we may
assume that the younger Abulafia was less resistant or antagonistic to theosophical
Kabbalah than he became in the second half of the 1280s in Sicily, as a result of the
assault by R Shlomo ben Abraham ibn Adret. 32 We may assume that the younger
Abulafia had collected kabbalistic material from the Geronese school, such as
R Azriel of Gerona's Sha'ar ha-Sho'el, which is found in the Parma de Rossi
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
manuscript (fols. 8b-i4b), and brought them to Italy, either because at the begin-
ning of his career he did not oppose the theosophical positions or because he was
selling them for financial reasons. Daniel Abrams has kindly drawn my attention to
the fact that Ms. New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America 8124, is a
direct continuation of the Parma codex. This manuscript contains theosophical
Kabbalah, as well as letters sent by Nahmanides from the land of Israel. Together
the Parma and New York manuscripts contain almost all the kabbalistic, and some
of the nonkabbalistic, material found in two manuscripts that were copied in Rome
in 1284.
If my hypothesis is correct that Abraham Abulafia brought the kabbalistic trea-
tises found in this manuscript to Rome, he should be recognized not only as the
disseminator of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and of his own ecstatic Kabbalah,
butalso of some forms of Ashkenazi material and theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah.
The presence in this manuscript of R. Ezra of Gerona's long fragment from his
Commentary on the Talmudic Agaddot, and of R Azriel of Gerona's books, as well as
the presence in this and other, similar manuscripts (described below) of texts by
R Asher ben David, both Kabbalists who developed the theory of the sefirot as
divine instruments, is emblematic of the further development of kabbalistic the-
osophy in Italy, since their instrumentalist stand was preferred by Kabbalists like
Menahem Recanati and Alemanno, as we shall see below.
Ms. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale 763
Ms. Paris, BN 763, copied by R Yehonathan ben Aviezer ha-Kohen of Rome, com-
prises sixty-four folios, 33 less than half the number found in the Parma codex.
However, it contributes some new elements. It contains the same commentaries
on Sefer Yetzirah (fols. ib-i2b, 22b-26a, 3ib~34b) found in the Parma codex, with
the exception of that of R Azriel of Gerona. The Abulafian material is also present
there (fols. 26a-28a and 3ia-b), as well as the material on Sefer Yetzirah and the
Golem (fols. 29a-b), and R. Asher ben David's Commentary on the Divine Name
(fols. i2a-2ib). 34 This correspondence, as well as other instances of overlapping
in content, 35 demonstrates a possible linkage between the two codexes. This con-
clusion is fostered by the fact that the Paris codex was copied in Rome in 1284, two
years before the Parma manuscript was compiled. Since both manuscripts are
written in Italian hands, since their content overlaps to a very great extent, and
since these are the only two dated manuscripts of Kabbalah in Italy from this
decade, the linkage between them seems to me to be more than plausible.
However, the precise nature of this linkage is not quite clear: the absence of the
commentary of R. Azriel of Gerona from the earlier document seems to lessen the
possibility that the later manuscript was copied from it. Since I assume that
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
Gerona's commentary was not added later randomly, but was part of a larger
collection similar to Abulafia's list, I am strongly inclined to presuppose the exis-
tence of another codex, now lost, similar in content to that of the Paris codex but
larger and closer to the content of Abulafia's list. Since the Paris codex contains an
Abulafian fragment that is strongly related to a work that Abulafia composed in
Rome in 1280, Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', it may be suggested that the copyist of this
codex had access to a manuscript emanating from a circle of students of Abulafia's,
in Rome or in Capua, and copied from it significant parts of the hypothetical man-
uscript. Later on, another copyist, R. Menahem ben Benjamin, had access to the
same or a very similar manuscript, and copied similar though not identical parts
of the original. On the basis of these facts, suggestions, and conjectures, I am
strongly inclined to see in Abraham Abulafia not only the first Kabbalist who com-
posed some of his books in Italy and Sicily, but also someone who brought with
him to Italy kabbalistic and Ashkenazi material, namely the anonymous Commentary
on Sefer Yetzirah — perhaps authored by R Yehudah he-Hasid — thus widening the
cultural horizons of the Jewish Italian intellectuals.
Ms. London, British Library 756
Like the Paris codex, the London manuscript catalogued as British Library 756 was
copied by R Yehonathan ben Aviezer ha-Kohen of Rome at an unknown date.
It contains mainly theosophical Kabbalah, most of it stemming from Catalonia.
The content of this manuscript and the Paris codex does not overlap, but together
they supply most of the kabbalistic material copied in Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390.
For example, the British Library manuscript contains the material of Gikatilla on
the secrets of the vocalizations and the divine name, R. Azriel of Gerona's Sha'ar
ha-Sho'el, and numerous theosophical-theurgical secrets stemming from Catalan
Kabbalah, which correspond to the content of Ms. New York, Jewish Theological
Seminary 1824. 36
3. Menahem ben Benjamin, the Copyist of the Parma Codex, a
Resident of Rome?
Rome in the 1280s was one of the most active Jewish cultural centers. Tzidqiah ben
Abraham and Isaiah di Trani the second, the two greatest halakhic scholars, lived
there, as did R. Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen, known as Gracian, an important
Jewish philosopher and translator from Arabic; Isaac ben Mordekhai, known as
Maestro Gaio; the famous poetR. Immanuel ben Shelomo and his cousin, a thinker
and translator named Yehudah Romano; and, of course, for a time, Abulafia. The
writings of these notables convey the impression that they were working in an
intense intellectual ambiance, which included many students, translations done by
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
invitation, and sharp controversy between Roman scholars and others on such
matters as Nahmanides' Kabbalah, Abulafia's interpretation of Maimonides' Guide
of the Perplexed, the polemic between Zerahyah Gracian and R. Hillel of Verona, and
exchanges of letters between the same Gracian and R. Yehudah ben Shelomo of
Barcelona. It was in this fertile intellectual milieu that the Paris and London codexes
were copied by "R. Yehonathan ben Eliezer ha-Kohen . . . from the community of
Ferrara." 37 The Paris codex contains not only the kabbalistic material described
above but also Nahmanides' Sha'ar ha-Gemul, a treatise dealing with the fate of
the soul after death; and R. Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel's translation of Abu Nasr
al-Farabi's treatise on the nature of the soul. 38 This translation from Arabic was
completed in the same period in which it was copied in the Paris codex. 39 Thus, the
kabbalistic treatises copied in the Paris and London codexes are a small contribu-
tion to a much more variegated spiritual milieu. The fact that the same treatises
were copied again, in the same decade, most of them by R. Menahem ben Benjamin,
in an unidentified place in Italy, shows that this kind of material had an audience
that welcomed the arrival of this type of literature. This interest in Kabbalah is par-
alleled in the same decade by the intense literary activity of Abulafia in Sicily and by
the decisive contributions of the Castilian Kabbalah. Let us turn now to the copyist
of some important parts of the Parma codex.
The name Menahem is by now very well known as the name of a copyist, as a
result of two studies by Michele Dukan, who was able to trace and describe in great
detail various manuscripts copied in Italy at the end of the thirteenth century for a
certain R. Menahem ben Benjamin. 40 Despite their identical name, it is possible
that Menahem ben Benjamin, the copyist of many of the kabbalistic treatises of the
Parma codex, was another person altogether; this issue still awaits a more detailed
analysis. Menahem ben Benjamin is mentioned in the colophon of another early
kabbalistic manuscript copied in Italy, again by Yehonathan ben Aviezer
ha-Kohen, Ms. Munich 207; the colophon mentions the sale of "Sefer ha-Hayyim
and Sefer ha-Meshalim" to R. Menahem ben Benjamin on day 30 of the month of
Adar I, 5046, which corresponds to February 26, 1286. 41 These two works are the
well-known Sefer ha-Hayyim, attributed to R. Abraham ibn Ezra but actually stem-
ming from a northern European thinker at the beginning of the thirteenth cen-
tury; 42 and Sefer ha-Meshalim, by the twelfth-century author R. Jacob ben Berakhiyah
ha-Naqdan. 43 What is important for our purpose here is that Menahem ben
Benjamin, the buyer of the Munich codex, copied into the Parma codex the entire
text of Sefer ha-Hayyim. Moreover, Sefer ha-Hayyim had already been copied by the
same R. Yehonathan at the end of the Paris codex. Thus, we may describe the con-
tent of the Parma codex as including kabbalistic material similar to that found in
the Paris and London codexes, as well as material found in the Munich codex; and
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
this combination was done by Menahem ben Benjamin. I would assume that
Menahem had not seen, much less bought, the Paris codex, which already included
the Sefer ha-Hayyim; had he possessed the Paris codex, he would presumably not
also have bought the Munich one. This conjecture is corroborated by the fact that
the Parma codex, which includes a commentary on Sefer Yetzirah by R Azriel of
Gerona, is not found in the Paris codex. It well may be that R Yehonathan had
copied another manuscript, in addition to the Paris and London ones, containing
the kabbalistic writings found in the Paris codex and more, and sold it to Menahem
ben Benjamin.
We have another important testimony about the arrival of Spanish Kabbalah in
Italy. A loose piece of parchment in Ms. Milan, Ambrosiana 52 P. 12, catalogue
no. 53, mentions the purchase of a manuscript on November 8, 1285, by a certain
R. Menahem ben Benjamin containing the same Sefer ha-Hayyim and R Eleazar of
Worms's Hokhmat ha-Nefesh, in addition to some "secrets." 44 The notice of sale also
mentions R Moshe ben Nahman's Commentary on the Pentateuch. 45 Some of the
kabbalistic material found in the Ambrosiana manuscript, copied in 1528, such as
R Azriel of Gerona's Sha'ar ha-Sho'el and R Asher ben David's Commentary on the
Diuine Name, is also contained in the Parma codex, as is Sefer ha-Hayyim; they also
occur in Ms. London, British Library 756. The Ambrosiana manuscript also con-
tains, inter alia, three other kabbalistic writings, the book Bahir, R Asher ben
David's Commentary on the Thirteen Diuine Attributes, and Midrash ha-Ne'elam on the
Scroll ojHuth, which were very influential on Recanati's writings. Thus, the content
of the Parma codex reflects to a very great degree a combination of almost all the
content of the Paris and London codexes, copied by R Yehonathan ben Aviezer —
with the exception of Nahmanides' Sha'ar ha-Gemu! — and important information
about the sale of the Ambrosiana manuscript to Menahem ben Benjamin.
Unfortunately, the notices of sale found in the Milan Ambrosiana and the
Munich codexes do not indicate the place. However, given that R Yehonathan ben
Aviezer ha-Kohen was in Rome less than two years before the sale mentioned in the
Munich codex, it is possible that he was still there when he copied and sold that
manuscript. He was still a resident of this city in 1294, when he copied the now
lost Ms. Turin 76, which contained only philosophical treatises translated by
R Zerahyah Hen. Thus we may suppose, though this is not certain, that both
Menahem and Yehonathan were residents of Rome. This conjecture is corrobo-
rated by Michele Dukan's detailed proof of the relationship between Menahem ben
Benjamin and another copyist, a woman named Paula, apparently a member of his
larger family, who was also a resident of Rome in the late 1280s and early 1290s. 46
On the basis of all these facts and conjectures, we may extrapolate that in Rome,
where Abulafia lived for a while in 1280 and taught two important halakhic figures, 47
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
there was a sudden burst of interest in Kabbalah, reflected by the copying of the
manuscripts discussed above, which fostered the emergence of ecstatic Kabbalah.
4. Is R. Menahem ben Benjamin the Copyist R. Menahem Recanati?
The acquisition of the Munich and Ambrosiana codexes, as well as the copying of
the Parma codex, by R Menahem ben Benjamin demonstrates a distinct interest in
Jewish esotericism, and raises the question whether we should not identify him
with the famous Italian Kabbalist named Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati.
Menahem Recanati is unquestionably one of the most important among the ear-
lier Kabbalists, and one whose influence on the development of the Italian
Kabbalah was profound. Yet although he is mentioned thousands of times in the
scholarly literature on theosophical Kabbalah, his biography remains sketchy.
The identification of this famous Kabbalist with some of the manuscripts copied
by Menahem ben Benjamin may help both to illuminate some points in his life and
to chart his intellectual development. 48
The extant writings of Menahem Recanati contain no traces of the Abulafian
content of the Parma manuscript, nor does he explicitly acknowledge Nahmanides'
commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, even though he quotes from it in his Commentary on the
Torah. 40 By and large, Recanati was not influenced by what I call the first wave of
kabbalistic literature found in the manuscripts described above. 50 Recanati does
quote some treatises in the Parma manuscript, such as the Prayer ojTFnity, attributed
to R Nehuniyah ben ha-Qaneh and stemming from the kabbalistic work Sefer ha-
'Iyyun, or Book of Contemplation, 51 and referred to in both the Commentary on the
Rationales ojfthe Commandments and the Commentary on the Torah. 52 However, the
Parma codex is not the main source of Recanati's Kabbalah as manifested in his
own writings. He apparently became acquainted with a much greater amount of
kabbalistic literature stemming from Castile, from the last decades of the thirteenth
century, and his encounter with the strong mythological Kabbalah, with the Book of
the Zohar at its center, has marginalized the importance of the material found in the
Parma manuscript. However, the content of this codex is important in helping us to
trace the evolution of Recanati's thought, which within a short period moved from
a relatively speculative focus to a more mythical one. This issue remains to be
explored in detail. However, I guess that although such a transition can be proved,
even while adopting the Castilian emphasis on myth Recanati remained inclined to
a philosophical approach to the theosophy as he imagined it.
5. Some of Nahmanides' Writings in Thirteenth-Century Rome
Four of the manuscripts produced in Rome in the 1280s reproduce Nahmanides'
writings: the Paris codex contains the commentary on Sefer Yetzirah and Sha'ar
AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
ha-Gemul, the London manuscript excerpts from the Commentary on the Pentateuch,
the Parma and New York manuscripts three of Nahmanides' epistles, the Parma
codex the commentary on Sefer Yetzirah. The Milan Ambrosiana codex mentions
Nahmanides' Commentary on the Pentateuch. Their presence demonstrates a growing
interest in the thought of Nahmanides, a fact that is corroborated by the great
influence of his Sha'ar ha-Gemul on R Hillel of Verona, who was active in the same
period." In his critique of R. HillePs views, R. Zerahyah repeatedly attacks
Nahmanides' positions, which he presents as opposing those of Maimonides. 54
Thus Rome became one of the centers of influence of the writings of Nahmanides
in the generation following his death. Nahmanides became known as the "great
Rabbi," ha-rau ha-gadol, and Recanati refers to him in this way scores of times in
his writings, as well as quoting Nahmanides hundreds of times in his Commentary
on the Torah, in most cases in a very positive way. 55
6. Remarks on Jewish Culture in Late-Thirteenth-Century Rome
Clearly, Rome was a place where Catalan Jewish culture, philosophical and
kabbalistic, was already well represented in the 1280s. Jewish Roman culture also
benefited from contacts with Christian Scholasticism. 56 Moreover, Italian Jewish
culture had already made contributions of its own, in the forms of Abulafia's and
Recanati's forms of Kabbalah and of translations in Rome of philosophical trea-
tises from Latin and Arabic. The commencement of Kabbalah in Italy was there-
fore part of a cultural renascence, manifested also in other domains such as
philosophy, poetry, and Halakhah. One example involves the Neoplatonic treatise
Liber de Causis, sometimes attributed to Aristotle, which was translated three times
from Latin, by Zerahyah Hen, Hillel of Verona, and Yehudah Romano, and quoted
by Abraham Abulafia in Sicily, apparently from yet another translation, whereas in
Spain this book did not have a significant impact on Jewish philosophers. 57 Recent
studies by Joseph Sermoneta and Caterina Rigo demonstrate amply that Jewish
philosophical thought in the city profited immensely from direct contact with
Christian texts available in Italy. Translations from Latin Scholastic literature and
translations from Arabic enriched the range of philosophical thought of Italian
Jews, who even preserved in Hebrew Latin texts lost in their original. 58 On the
other hand, it would be difficult to find a distinguished poet of the stature of
Immanuel of Rome at the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the
fourteenth century in the entire Jewish world. In our specific context of Kabbalah
in Italy, it should be mentioned that the philosopher Yehudah Romano was
inclined, like his contemporary Immanuel of Rome, to some form of speculative
mysticism, and even referred, perhaps for the first time, to the sefirot as identical
with the concept of ideas. 59 And different though Immanuel's and Yehudah
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
Romano's propensities were to a "rational mysticism" — to borrow a term used by
Georges Vajda and Joseph Sermoneta — like Abulafia they used Maimonides' Guide
ojfthe Perplexed as a major point of departure for their mysticism.
7. Abulafia and Some Ashkenazi Treatises Extant in
Ms. Rome, Angelica 46
In his enumeration of the commentaries on Sefer Yetzirah, Abulafia mentions that
he has heard of one by a certain R Eleazar Ashkenazi ha-Darshan, an inhabitant
of Wiirzburg, that he has not yet seen. Such a commentary had indeed been writ-
ten, and it has recently been printed. 60 How did a Kabbalist who had been living for
some years in Messina know in 1285-86 that a contemporary Ashkenazi author
had written a book that he had not yet seen? The answer lies in some form of oral
communication, which reflects not only Abulafia's curiosity about commentaries
on Sefer Yetzirah but also the way in which Jewish culture operates, and in our case
Jewish culture in Italy. An important codex, preserved today in the Angelica Library
in Rome, no. 46, contains material related to R. Eleazar ha-Darshan, his son
R Moshe Azriel, and some of their Ashkenazi sources. 61 This is a late-thirteenth-
century manuscript written in an Ashkenazi hand, whose content has already
attracted the attention of scholars but still demands detailed analysis. Here I can
address only a few issues touching upon our subject. Ms. Rome, Angelica 46,
begins (fols. ia-i8a) with an untitled treatise by R Moshe Azriel ben Eleazar
ha-Darshan of Erfurt, which combines a variety of Ashkenazi esoteric traditions
with theosophical symbolism. 62 Immediately afterward there are three treatises
dealing with esoteric issues: Sefer ha-Nauon, 63 Commentary on the Hajtarah, and a
version of the Commentary on the Seventy Names ojfMetatron. All three were written by
an early-thirteenth-century Ashkenazi figure, R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo the
Prophet, known also as Troestlin the Prophet. His Hebrew name and his
Commentary on the Seventy Names o/Metatron are mentioned by R. Moshe Azriel ben
Eleazar ha-Darshan in the Angelica manuscript. 64 The fact that the manuscript
resides in a Roman library does not in itself mean that it was copied in the city or
that it was there in the thirteenth century. However, I would like to suggest that
material found in this manuscript was known in late-thirteenth-century Rome, by
drawing upon some information in Abulafia's writings.
In his commentary on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, written in 1279 or 1280
in Capua and titled Sitrei Torah, Abulafia quotes from a Commentary on the Seventy
Names o/Metatron. The passage deals with the angel Yaho'el, but it differs from the
Angelica manuscript both in details of its wording and in some important
themes. 65 Abulafia attributes the passage to R. Eleazar of Worms. The angelic
name Yaho'el appears not only in Abulafia's Sitrei Torah but also in his Hayyei
AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
ha-'OIam ha-Ba', books written in 1279-80 in Capua and Rome, and also in his
latter writings, such as Sefer ha-'Ot and Sefer ha-Hesheq; but the name of this angel
never occurs in his extant earlier writings. 66
As I have already pointed out elsewhere, there are similarities between themes
found in the Angelica 46 codex and Abulafia's thought. So, for example, the vision
of the letters of the divine name as described in Sefer ha-Navon is reminiscent of a
passage from Abulafia's Hayyei ha-'OIam ha-Ba', a book written in Rome in 1280. ° 7
Also the connection between the recitation of divine names and the attainment of
an experience of prophecy, so central in Abulafia's Kabbalah, bears a resemblance
to a text by R Moshe Azriel. 68 Last but not least, as I have hinted at above, Abulafia's
understanding of the meaning of Judaism by an analysis of the consonants of the
term Yehudah may stem from R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo. 60 Let me emphasize that I
do not assume that Abulafia had seen or used the Ashkenazi material as formu-
lated in Ms. Angelica 46. He had, in my opinion, another and presumably earlier
version of R Nehemiah's writings before his eyes, since the passage he quotes
explicitly from the Commentary on the Seuenty Names of Metatron contains some few
elements that are absent from the version preserved in the Angelica codex. The
major difference reflects, in my opinion, an act of censorship of Christian or
Jewish-Christian motifs, which are preserved in Abulafia's version of the pas-
sage. 70 I assume that Abulafia knew the anonymous student of R Moshe Azriel
who was presumably responsible for the formulation of the Ashkenazi texts as
they appear in Ms. Angelica, 71 but that the ecstatic Kabbalist had seen the material
that that student brought from the Ashkenazi region before the student edited it
in the form it is found in the manuscript. Other support for the assumption that
the material represented in Ms. Angelica was found in the thirteenth century in
Rome comes from the fact that the only early Kabbalist to be influenced by it is no
other than R Menahem Recanati. 72 1 wonder whether the Ashkenazi figure that he
testifies that he met and had some discussions with was connected to his acquain-
tance with our material. 73 Therefore, we may assume that both Abulafia and
Recanati had access, in Italy, to some forms of esoteric material emanating from
Ashkenaz that were not mediated by Spanish sources. 74
These observations are important not only for compiling a potential inventory of
the resources of Jewish esotericism in late-thirteenth-centuiy Rome or Italy, but
also for a better understanding of Abulafia's development. His first and most for-
mative encounter with Jewish mysticism indeed took place in Barcelona in 1271, but
we may assume also the importance of another, less formative, but nevertheless
significant encounter with two other forms of Ashkenazi esotericism in 1279-80 in
Rome: one with the works of R Nehemiah ben Shlomo, and perhaps another with
a later and more synthetic type of thought articulated by the descendants of
AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
R. Yehudah he-Hasid, his grandson R. Eleazar ben Moshe ha-Darshan, and the
latter's son, perhaps R Moshe Azriel. This encounter presumably took place
during the most intense and fertile years in Abulafia's life and literary career.
Thus, in one decade, approximately 1280-1290, the Jewish culture in Rome was
enriched by the arrival of a variety of Jewish esoteric material: theosophical and
ecstatic Kabbalah, as well as Ashkenazi esoteric material. As we shall see below, in
this decade R. Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen in Rome knew of material that was
close to a magical-esoteric understanding of Maimonides. 75
The concomitant arrival of a significant stream of books from Spain and
Ashkenaz dealing with Jewish esoterica and other topics is unquestionably a spe-
cifically Jewish development. 76 It fertilized not only Abraham Abulafia's Kabbalah
but also R Menahem Recanati's thought, and the writings of both Kabbalists
would be translated into Latin and studied in Florence at the end of the fifteenth
century by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and others. However, in the thirteenth
century none of those books had been translated into Latin or studied by Christian
scholars or authors. Nevertheless, this phenomenon of cultural transmission and
fertilization of Jewish thought in the Italian peninsula may help us to understand
also another cultural event: the arrival in Italy of material from Castile translated
into Latin or Castilian, and its possible impact on Dante Alighieri. Miguel Asin
Palacios, and following him other scholars, have pointed to the possibility that
Liber Scalae, or Libra della scalla, a book translated from Arabic into some Romance
languages and describing Muhammad's ascent on high, may have influenced
Dante's Diuina commedia. 77 However, some scholars have suggested that themes
found in the Arabic book stem from Jewish esoteric literature, more precisely from
the so-called Heikhalot literature. 78 It is this literature that permeates also the
esoteric writings of the Ashkenazi figures represented in Ms. Angelica 46. 7 °
8. General Reflections on Transition and
Preservation in Medieval Italy
We have analyzed the content of several early Italian manuscripts dealing with
forms of esoterica stemming from both Ashkenazi and Sephardi sources. The
arrival of a great amount of material in Italy in the thirteenth century attests to
deep changes during that time in the different centers of Jewish culture. In
addition to the solid historical evidence in the form of manuscripts and persons
who brought them to Italy, discussed above, there was a legend in this century
concerning a sage who arrived in Sicily from Morocco. In a pseudepigraphic letter
attributed to R Hai Gaon, an important halakhic figure in the tenth century,
but actually fabricated sometime in the second half of the thirteenth century, 80
we read:
AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
this great sage, may God save, from whom I received all this, testified about
a sage from Marseilles who came to Montpellier and testified that he had
seen in Sicily a great Moroccan sage, who was intelligent and deeply knowl-
edgeable in the science of astronomy, that of the ancients and of the later,
and was the great physician of the king of Sicily, and was highly regarded by
the king and his ministers and great ones, like an angel of God. And he [the
sage] told his disciples: "Be wary of the sect of the inquirers and the sect of
those who speculate." Moreover, this [Sicilian] sage showed to the sage of
Montpellier a passage from the books of the great Moroccan sage: 81 "Woe to
whoever relies on his sharpness and inquiry, and his head goes after his feet,
and leaves aside the secrets of the prophets and the sages of the children of
Israel, and indulges in the science of philosophy, which is an illusion, and
the science of the sorcerers and diviners, its foot is without a head and a
brain. . . .Woe to whoever speculates but did not receive, [and] who received
but did not speculate, because both should be learned from the mouth of the
rabbi, and by eye and heart. This is the end of the passage." 82
At this point it is impossible to verify a historical core for such a legend, and
I am inclined to dismiss its contribution to the historical understanding of the
processes that shaped the thirteenth-century developments of Jewish mysticism.
However, its imaginaire serves as an excellent tool for a better understanding of the
dynamics of the controversy between Maimonides and the camp that opposed him
and whose interest in occult matters was great. In a way, this is an answer to the
Great Eagle's letter to the sages of Montpellier against astrology. Sicily serves in
this epistle as a stronghold of antiphilosophical approaches, one that emphasizes
the ancient lore and its transmission as superior to speculation and inquiry. Just
as the Andalusian Jews expelled from Spain were active in promoting Maimonides'
thought in new centers, eminently Provence, 83 so too the pseudepigraphic epistle
emphasized Morocco, where Maimonides lived for a while, the vast knowledge of
the sage, and his status as a physician of the king — just as Maimonides was the
physician of the sultan. In any case, Sicily stands in the epistle as a place of trans-
mission of knowledge between North Africa and southern France, in this case not
of written material but of oral traditions, a role reminiscent of Italy insofar as the
Hasidei Ashkenaz traditions are concerned. Moreover, unlike the solitary figure of
Maimonides in Egypt, who corresponded much but did not have a circle of disci-
ples, the anonymous Kabbalist who forged the epistle conveyed the impression
that in Sicily there was a master who led a group of disciples.
Although Italy was undoubtedly a major center for the transmission of esoteric
traditions from East to West in the tenth and eleventh centuries, after the first
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
decades of the thirteenth century, as we shall see in chapter 12, the flux of esoteric
knowledge drastically reversed direction, with esoteric material making its way to
the East from Italy, which became the major consumer of the new material. Italy's
new status reflected improvements in social and economic conditions for Jews,
producing more stable communities than elsewhere in Europe, with the result
that the existence of centers of interest in culture in Sicily, Naples, Rome, and,
later, Mantua, Florence, and Venice drew many scholars and manuscripts to the
Italian peninsula, and many of the manuscripts have been preserved there ever
since.
It is solely in Italian codexes that material written in both Spain and Ashkenaz
survived. This is the case of the small fragments by R. Barukh Togarmi mentioned
above, presumably written in Barcelona, and the material by R. Eleazar ha-Darshan.
These examples are part of a much larger picture, provided by Benjamin Richler:
manuscripts either copied in Italy or brought there represent no less than
35 percent and perhaps even as much as 45 percent of the entire manuscript liter-
ature in Hebrew. This is a huge percentage, given that Italian Jews never amounted
to a significant share of the Jewish population throughout the world; and even the
lower figure would appear to be an exaggeration if the fine scholarship and cautious
approach of Richler did not stand beyond these statistics. 84 Also surprising in this
context is the small number of works written originally in Italy in relation to the
large amounts of literature committed to writing in Spain and in the Ashkenazi
lands. The discrepancy between the small size of Italian Jewry in the thirteenth cen-
tury and the huge patrimony of manuscripts that was either created in the peninsula
or brought to Italy and preserved there, especially since the thirteenth century,
confirms Italy's central cultural importance for Jews in this period.
Significant percentages of these Italian manuscripts deal with Kabbalah and
other forms of Jewish esoterica. Although the catalogues of the numerous Italian
libraries are among the earliest and sometimes the best available in Jewish studies,
exhaustive identification of the content of the manuscripts is only in its first stages,
as is the work necessary to produce a more detailed picture of their content,
distribution, and impact. Given the propensity to anonymity that characterizes
kabbalistic literature, this situation prevents an exhaustive presentation of Italian
Kabbalah. Over the years, I have attempted to read all the available manuscripts of
the main Italian Kabbalists or those who were active in Italy, especially Abraham
Abulafia, Menahem Recanati, and Yohanan Alemanno. However, many manu-
scripts composed in Italy, and even more of them copied there, still await a first
perusal, a detailed analysis, an identification of their authors, and integration
of their contents into a more comprehensive picture of the history of Italian
Kabbalah. The following chapters represent an effort to take into consideration
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AbulafiaandMenahem ben Benjamin
the treasuries of Italian manuscripts, but the resulting picture is necessarily
tentative, with many gaps and shortcomings. I shall attempt to go beyond just list-
ing names and titles, to analyze what seem to me to be the major conceptual
frameworks that informed the Italian Kabbalists and, whenever possible, to inte-
grate their views within both Jewish and Christian cultural and historical contexts.
So far we have dealt mainly with the arrival of Kabbalah and kabbalistic
material in the Italian territories. But Abulafia came from elsewhere, and the
manuscripts that he brought with him represent forms of Jewish esoterica elabo-
rated in other centers of Jewish culture, as in the case of the content of Ms. Rome,
Angelica 46. The sudden irruption of new material into Italy introduced forms of
Jewish esotericism that in turn developed further in the thirteenth century in other
parts of Europe. Their arrival in Italy marks the region's central cultural status in
this period for both Christians and Jews.
•105-
8
R. MENAHEM BEN BENJAMIN
RECANATI
i. The Theosophical-Theurgical Model
Abraham Abulafia, a Spanish figure who flourished in Italy, was the founder of
ecstatic Kabbalah. R. Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati was the first Italian Kabbalist
to adopt an important version of another type of Kabbalah, the theosophical-
theurgical one. In doing so he accepted a theological view that differed dramatically
from Abulafia's, one that assumed the existence of a transcendental divine layer,
designated as 'Illat ha-'Illor, Causa Causarum, and a system often divine powers named
sefirot. We shall have much more to say about the details of this theosophical system
in the next chapter. Here, however, we should explore the consequences of the
fact that the first Kabbalist who flourished in Italy after Abulafia did not follow his
•io6-
Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
mystical path and ignored his writings; he did not even engage in polemics with the
ecstatic Kabbalist or his followers. Indeed, the two Kabbalists are so different in
their outlook that there are very few points of contact, a fact that raises the question
of the very nature of Kabbalah. Since the divergences between Abulafia's ecstatic
Kabbalah and Recanati's theosophical-theurgical one are so substantial, it may be
asked whether they should be discussed under the same rubric or if they belong to
the same lore. The differences between the two Kabbalists active in Italy are
important not only for the phenomenology of Kabbalah but especially for the
understanding of the specific nature of this lore in Italy.
Having examined some aspects of Abulafia's mystical writings, let us consider
R. Menahem Recanati's kabbalistic project. He is one of the most famous repre-
sentatives of what I call the theosophical-theurgical model, one of the three major
models in kabbalistic literature. Unlike the ecstatic model, represented chiefly by
the writings of Abraham Abulafia and some of his followers, the theosophical-
theurgical model pervades many kabbalistic writings and is the most influential
model in Kabbalah.
How should Recanati's role in this prolific kabbalistic literature be understood?
Is he an innovative writer, like Abulafia, or merely an author who imported to Italy
a view that had already been expressed elsewhere? His importance consists, in my
opinion, not only in his importation from Spain to Italy of the view that the ten
sefirot are the instruments of the divine creation, but also in his having offered the
most articulated and widespread formulation of this view. Whereas Abulafia's role
in creating ecstatic Kabbalah is unique, Recanati is only one, though indeed a very
important one, of the major theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists. As I shall show in
the next chapter, he brought together two quite different kabbalistic theosophies,
and his synthesis is both unique and widely influential. Here, however, let us
briefly consider the way in which kabbalistic theosophy has been moved to the
center of research in modern scholarship. This discussion is important in order to
differentiate the way I see Recanati from the way in which he has been understood
by modern scholars, as part of their larger vision of kabbalistic literature. Most
modern scholars, largely following the views of Gershom Scholem, construe
Kabbalah as a theosophical doctrine related to the ten sefirot. 1 The assumption is
that a relatively homogeneous mystical phenomenon, more theoretical than prac-
tical, underlies an entire range of kabbalistic literature. Let me start with one of
Scholem's more explicit definitions of Kabbalah: "the mystical interpretation of
the attributes and the unity of God, in the so-called doctrine of the Sefiroth, con-
stituted a problem common to all Kabbalists, while the solutions given to it by and
in the various schools differ from one another." 2 Despite this scholarly attempt to
propose the existence of a common core question for all the kabbalistic schools,
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Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
which responded to it in various ways, it would be much more cautious to see the
theosophical aspect as an important one addressed by many, though not all,
Kabbalists. However, Scholem's entire oeuvre takes the position that theosophy is
not only a central issue shared by all the Kabbalists, but also the single most
important feature of Kabbalah. The result is an assumption that all Kabbalah
focuses on attaining knowledge of the divine attributes, rather than on the experi-
ential involvement in processes connected with them, by means of theurgic, and
sometimes mystical-theurgic, performance of the commandments.
Here is another of Scholem's descriptions of Jewish mysticism, which is repre-
sentative of his vision of Kabbalah. Just before the quotation above, after indicating
that Jewish mysticism is shaped by the positive content and values recognized by
Judaism, Scholem characterizes the Jewish mystics as follows:
Their ideas proceed from the concepts and values peculiar to Judaism, that
is to say, above all from the belief in the Unity of God and the meaning of His
revelation as laid down in the Torah, the sacred law. Jewish mysticism in its
various forms represents an attempt to interpret the religious values of
Judaism in terms of mystical values. It concentrates upon the idea of the
living God who manifests himself in the act of Creation, Revelation and
Redemption. Pushed to its extreme, the mystical meditation on this idea
gives birth to the conception of a sphere, a whole realm of divinity, which
underlies the world of our sense-data and which is present and active in all
that exists. 3
There is much to be praised in this statement; however, it embraces the dominant
modern theoretical approach to Kabbalah, which conceives of this mystical lore
more in theological than in experiential terms. So, for example, a reverberation of
this view is found in R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, who claims that "the discursive and even
dialectical elements are so prominent in kabbalistic literature that we may almost
speak of an intellectualistic hypertrophy. It often looks as if the sole difference
between Talmudic and Kabbalistic literature resides in the different subject-matter." 4
Similarly, Isaiah Tishby, another of Scholem's main disciples, describes one of the
key concepts of Kabbalah, the doctrine of the sefirot, as follows: "it can be estab-
lished without a doubt that there is some reflection here of a definite gnostic ten-
dency, and that it did in fact emerge and develop from a historico-literary contact
with the remnants of Gnosis, which were preserved over a period of many genera-
tions in certain Jewish circles, until they found their way to early kabbalists, who were
deeply affected by them both spiritually and intellectually." 5 Indeed, as we learn from
this quotation, confidence in Scholem's theory was so great that the Gnostic thesis
was considered to be a proven fact, which "deeply affected" Kabbalah.
•io8-
Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
The kabbalistic views on evil, another topic that may indeed be important but
has certainly been overemphasized in modern scholarship, is also judged to have
been influenced by Gnostic sources. The fascination of some scholars of Kabbalah
with the problem of evil and its role in Jewish mysticism warrants a separate analy-
sis; it may betray the fascination with evil that is characteristic of the Gnostics. 6
Scholem assumed that the kabbalistic view of the origin of evil had a Zoroastrian
source, and that it reached the medieval Kabbalists through the mediation of
Gnostic sources. 7 Tishby formulates this view in what is the main study on the
kabbalistic doctrine of evil: "The theory that evil and the dark, 'left-sided' forces
were put forth as a separate emanation is an ancient one, and it certainly stems from
Iranian dualistic systems, and from there it came to the Gnostic movement. ... It
is clear that such a doctrine had necessarily changed its extreme dualistic nature
when it penetrated into Jewish circles." 8 Elsewhere the same scholar mentions that
"the gnostic character of the main trends of the medieval Jewish mysticism, known
as Kabbalah, is now a well-known and well-established fact. . . . These systems
exhibit gnostic traits in the whole field of theology: in their doctrines of God,
creation, evil, man, salvation, and redemption. They amount, in fact, to a gnostic
transformation of Judaism." 9
No hesitation seems to haunt scholars in their assessment of an issue that
"deeply affects" the very nature of the main form of Kabbalah. Indeed, if the theory
above is correct, Recanati is to be conceived of as one of the greatest "Gnostics,"
given his concerns with theosophy and sometimes with evil. Nevertheless, it seems
that a better understanding of Recanati's thought, one that is more complex and
variegated, may open the way for a better understanding of the main concerns of
other theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists, too, and help us to restate the entire
problem of Gnosticism as a significant component of Kabbalah. What seems to
me problematic in the scholarly theories described above involves more than the
inadequate evidence for a transmission of ancient Gnostic mythologems into
medieval Kabbalah; rather it involves the dissociation of the theosophical specula-
tions of scholars from their crucial context, that of theurgy. 10 Modern scholars, like
the ancient Gnostics, have been much more concerned with abstract knowledge,
marginalizing the ritual involved in attaining the mystical experience.
Theosophy is a realm of discourse that modern scholars appear to believe they
can discuss in isolation, as if the Kabbalists were theologians whose main concern
was to map the upper world as an enterprise in itself. It is my contention that the-
osophy and theurgy were inextricably intertwined, and in the next chapter I shall
attempt to demonstrate from Recanati's writings that this is so. By doing so I wish
to reinforce an interpretation of the first steps of the Kabbalah as better understood
on the basis of an internal development in rabbinic Judaism, whose emphasis on
•iog-
Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
ritual is well known. Thus the way in which I seek to present Recanati differs from
the modern scholarly understanding of Kabbalah both historically — I do not see
any significant role for Gnosticism — and phenomenologically, for I contend that
we should not separate theosophy from theurgy. Likewise, I shall attempt to show
that there are strong mystical aspects to the discussions of theosophical issues.
However, before exploring the conceptual innovations of this Kabbalist, let us
survey his literary legacy.
2. The Writings of R. Menahem Recanati
In a generation of very prolific Kabbalists, Recanati was exceptional. Between 1270
and 1295 kabbalistic literature flowered in an unprecedented manner, and most of
the Kabbalists produced quite voluminous and numerous writings. This productiv-
ity is obvious in both Spain and Italy. The names of Joseph Gikatilla, Moshe de
Leon, Abraham Abulafia, Joseph of Hamadan, and last, but not least, those produc-
ing the Zoharic literature are ample evidence of a new phase in kabbalistic literature
that may be described as that of the innovative Kabbalah. Freedom to innovate and
extensive writings are intertwined and are often marked also by originality. In the
generation immediately following the innovative Kabbalah the impulse for volumi-
nous writings continued, though only rarely marked by originality; most Kabbalists
capitalized on the insights of the previous generation, combining them to create
mosaics that were more complex but less coherent and innovative. The writings of
the innovative Kabbalists are characterized by the absence of names of earlier
Kabbalists or quotations from their writings. This independence from authority
was quite astonishing in a literature that claimed to be an ancient tradition. In the
generation of the mosaic Kabbalists — namely, those combining the ideas of several
kabbalistic schools — the situation changed dramatically: the lengthy productions
of R. Yitzhaq of Acre, Joseph Angelet, and R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid are
replete with quotations from a variety of kabbalistic schools. They are more
concerned with absorbing and digesting, arranging and rearranging the pertinent
sources in larger literary creations, more with translating, imitating, or even plagia-
rizing than with enlarging the horizons of kabbalistic thought.
Between 1295 and 1330, although much was written, there was little conceptual
progress. Among the mosaic Kabbalists, the most syncretistic was R. Yitzhaq of
Acre, who traveled much in order to study Kabbalah from a variety of schools. His
writings provide evidence of the spectrum of kabbalistic knowledge available at the
beginning of the fourteenth century. He combines the Catalan and Castilian forms of
Kabbalah with the ecstatic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia and with Sufic views." His
voluminous Mc'irat 'Einayyim demonstrates the existence of a more general tendency
to compile compendia aimed at exposing the hidden dimensions of the Bible.
Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
Other mosaic Kabbalists were less knowledgeable and less syncretistic. Angelet,
though a student of R Shem Tov ibn Gaon, a Catalan Kabbalist, was deeply
immersed in Castilian Kabbalah. R David ben Yehudah he-Hasid was more origi-
nal, although most of his writing consists of lengthy passages copied verbatim
from a variety of kabbalistic sources. Recanati was a contemporary of these
Kabbalists, and it seems reasonable that there were some relations among them.
R Yitzhaq of Acre provided him with a major source for his theosophy, as we shall
see in the next chapter; and R. Joseph Angelet is the first Kabbalist to have quoted
Recanati by name. 12 What is common to all four mosaic Kabbalists is their acquain-
tance with the Zohar: R. Yitzhaq wrote the most detailed and seminal document
dealing with the emergence of this book, 13 R. David was the first to translate it, 14
R. Joseph Angelet was the first to imitate its Aramaic language, 15 and Recanati was
both the first Kabbalist to quote extensively and repeatedly from this book and,
together with R David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, the first of its interpreters. By his
extensive use of this book Recanati inscribes himself in the list of the Spanish
Kabbalists, his contemporaries and admirers of the Zohar. However, while it is not
surprising that the newly circulated book had a wide influence in Spain, the surfac-
ing of numerous and sometimes long passages from the Zohar in the same genera-
tion in Italy poses a historical problem, which becomes even more evident when
combined with the deep influence of the later kabbalistic writings of three
Castilians: R. Moshe ben Shem Tov de Leon, R. Joseph of Hamadan, and R Joseph
Gikatilla. How is it possible to explain the massive use of a vast literature composed
only few years before Recanati himself began his own kabbalistic writings? I have
no definitive answer to this quandary, and in principle I see only two possible solu-
tions: that a massive importation of kabbalistic literature took place in Italy at the
very end of the thirteenth century, or the alternative, for which there is no historical
documentation either, namely that Recanati visited Spain for a while, perhaps the
region of Soria or Saragossa, and acquired there kabbalistic writings that served
him in composing his own writings immediately afterward somewhere in Italy.
In any case, what is clear is that Recanati made massive use of the more mythical
Kabbalah that reached him shortly before he started his own kabbalistic literary
activity, absorbing its contents, mastering its details, and employing the new texts
extensively in his own writings. He apparently was aware of the late date of some of
his sources, since he introduces the Castilian books that were composed shortly
before with the identifier "the last [most recent] Kabbalists." 16 His use of the new
wave of texts is neither servile nor simply eclectic, but usually deliberate, imposing
a rather coherent view upon most of the sources quoted in a certain context. In any
case, the spectrum of the Spanish kabbalistic writings available to Recanati is very
impressive, and the richness of his library is stunning.
Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
Like the other mosaic Kabbalists, Recanati quotes lengthy passages quite pre-
cisely, a fact that facilitates definitive identifications of his sources, though he is
less generous than R. Yitzhaq of Acre and R. Joseph Angelet in pointing out the
names or the titles of their sources.
What are Recanati's original kabbalistic writings, in addition to the treatises that
he copied, as suggested in the previous chapter? Undoubtedly the most voluminous
and influential book is his Commentary on the Torah, perhaps the first full-fledged
interpretation of almost the entire Pentateuch based on dominant concepts belong-
ing to the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah. Abraham Abulafia's commentary on
the Torah, Sefer ha-Majtehot, composed in 1289, uses the allegorical and numerical
techniques described in chapter 5 above, and remained in very few manuscripts. The
book had no substantial impact on the further development of Kabbalah. R. Moshe
ben Nahman's commentary deals chiefly with nonesoteric topics, and R. Bahya ben
Asher's voluminous commentary uses Kabbalah as part of a more comprehensive
explanation of the biblical text, which also includes numerous midrashic and alle-
gorical expositions. The Zohar, the most influential commentary on the Pentateuch,
is substantially different from Recanati's in its strong midrashic orientation.
R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid's Sefer Mar'ot ha-Tzoue'ot is mainly a compilation of
long passages copied faithfully from other sources or translated from Aramaic.
Thus it is mosaic on the macrocosmic level, copying one kabbalistic source for the
interpretation of a certain biblical passage, whereas Recanati adduces a variety of
concepts and sources in order to interpret one verse kabbalistically. 17 Sefer Mar'ot
ha-Tzoue'ot remained at the margin of Kabbalah, although it was more influential
than Abulafia's commentary on the Pentateuch. Thus Recanati was the first Kabbalist
who embraced a theosophical-theurgical worldview in order to adopt an exoteric
approach to the Torah and whose work was influential on a large scale. Recanati's
commentary is dense and concise, condensing the most important Catalan and
Castilian discussions of the kabbalistic secrets of the Bible, including many Zoharic
citations. Its huge success is attested by its survival in a great number of manuscripts
and by its early dissemination in printed form. It was one of the first kabbalistic
books ever published — and republished — in its Hebrew original 18 and was trans-
lated into Latin more than once, 19 exercising a very significant influence on two
major Christian Kabbalists, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola 20 and Guillaume Postel. 21
The second most influential work by this Italian Kabbalist is his Commentary on
the Rationales ojfthe Commandments. In this case, too, the large number of manuscripts
in which it is extant and the early printings attest to an enthusiastic reception, espe-
cially in Italy and in the Byzantine Empire. 22 This is a much smaller treatise, reflect-
ing an earlier stage of Recanati's knowledge of Kabbalah, and much of it was
absorbed into the Commentary on the Torah.
Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
The third kabbalistic book, The Commentary on Prayer, is an even shorter treatise,
whose impact was much smaller. 23 It seems that Recanati never finished writing
the commentaries on the Torah and prayer. He composed two short poems based
on kabbalistic concepts and compiled a manuscript later referred to as his Siddur,
prayer book, where he copied short magical treatises, as well as a collection —
Liqqutim, or Collectanea — containing magical material. 24 There is good reason to
assume that early in his career Recanati composed a commentary on the Zohar,
which does not survive, and perhaps it, too, was integrated within the Commentary
on the Torah. 25 Recanati is also known for his nonkabbalistic collection of Pesaqim,
legal decisions that were very influential and were printed several times. 26
All the literary genres used by Recanati in his main kabbalistic writings are
traditional — commentaries on classical matters in Judaism — and in this respect
he resembles other Kabbalists. Thus, Recanati can be described as an exemplary
nomian Kabbalist, whereas Abulafia was preeminently an anomian Kabbalist.
Recanati' s writings and sources reflect a situation in kabbalistic literature that
warrants discussion in some detail. Whereas in Spain Abulafia's writings were
banned and the Kabbalists there rejected or at least neglected ecstatic Kabbalah,
gravitating instead to the mythical Kabbalah best represented by the Zohar, in Italy
both ecstatic Kabbalah and the mythical version were well represented. At least at
the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth, Italy appears
to have been home to a much more variegated kabbalistic literature than any other
country. The two trends also remained influential in Italy beyond this period, and
later a third trend, the magical one, was incorporated into Kabbalah there. This
picture helps to counteract modern scholarship's overemphasis on the centrality
of Spanish Kabbalah and to encourage a less monolithic understanding of
Kabbalah from a phenomenological, historical, and geographical point of view.
Studies of other major centers, such as Byzantium, have revealed Italian influence.
A pluralistic vision of the history of Kabbalah, which entails deemphasizing
the centrality of Spain in the history of Kabbalah, will help to distinguish more
precisely the specific contributions of Kabbalah in Italy.
3. Recanati's Mystical Path
According to a legend preserved in Recanati's family, at the beginning of his career
Recanati could not understand matters of the Torah, and only after many attempts
did he receive a revelation that opened his heart to the study of Kabbalah. 27 This
legend may contain some core of truth; it may reflect a tradition connected to reve-
latory experiences connected to this Kabbalist. Indeed, several references to
extraordinary experiences can be detected in his Commentary on the Torah. 28 These
references, however, may have nothing to do with kabbalistic ideals, and even less
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Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
with the use of mystical techniques designed to reach a certain type of mystical
experience.
However, this was not the case when Recanati discussed topics such as joy,
devequt, and prophecy. Some of these issues had already attracted the attention of
the Geronese Kabbalists in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, although
late in this century their importance was reduced in Spanish theosophical
Kabbalah. Let me start with a view that seems to be characteristic of Recanati.
When discussing a certain passage from the Zohar, he wrote: "When I had seen
this [interpretation] 29 I enjoyed it very much, which seemed to me as if I had
received it from Sinai. " 3 ° This personal confession becomes clearer when we com-
pare it with a second passage dealing with joy and kabbalistic secrets: "when
something that was previously unknown is revealed to someone there is no greater
joy in the world like it . . . because joy is one part from the parts of the holy spirit,
and when new things are revealed out of joy the soul is separated from its place." 31
The study of the Kabbalah in a creative manner has a strong experiential aspect.
Thus, it is not the precise content of the study that matters but the spiritual
aptitude of the Kabbalist to innovate, a capacity that will open him to revelatory
experiences. These and other, similar statements 32 demonstrate that there is no
automatic connection between theosophy and casuistry, as modern scholars have
assumed. Scholem insists that theosophical speculations "occupy a large and
conspicuous area in kabbalistic teaching. Sometimes their connections with the
mystical plane become rather tenuous and are superseded by an interpretative
and homiletic vein with occasionally even results in a kind of kabbalistic pilpul
(casuistry)." 33
Crucial in this context is Recanati's recommendation that someone not study
Kabbalah except while he is in a state of joy. 34 Elsewhere he elaborates upon the
talmudic dictum that the ancestor died by means of the Kiss of God; originally point-
ing toward a blessed death, one without pain, in the kabbalistic-Neoplatonizing
interpretation this dictum was seen as referring to an ecstatic experience, reminis-
cent of the one described above when dealing with the revelation of secrets: "Know
that, just as the ripe fruit falls from the tree, it no longer needing its connection [to
the tree] , so is the link between the soul and the body. When the soul has attained
whatever she is able to attain, she cleaves [deueqah] to the supernal soul, and will
remove its raiment of dust and sever [itself] from its place [namely the body] and will
cleave to the Shekhinah; and this is [the meaning of] death by a kiss." 35
Recanati or his hypothetical source is heavily influenced by the fruit metaphor
occurring in R. Abraham ibn Ezra's commentary on Psalm i, where the verb daueq
also occurs. Thus, the ultimate experience of cleaving to the supernal soul enables her
to attain the final union, namely, the cleaving to the divine presence; the preceding
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Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
experiences are implicitly regarded as lower and intermediate states, culminating in
this beatific union. Here Neoplatonism seems to be appearing in kabbalistic garb; in
both ontological schemes, the supernal soul is only an intermediary entity, which
must be transcended in the final return of the soul to her origin. The union with the
Universal Soul is a preparatory stage on the natural journey of the worthy soul toward
her source; until then, the experience of union may be regarded as a series of intermit-
tent acts, which enable the person to remain alive and active in this world. Qua
Kabbalist, Recanati viewed the ultimate source of the human soul in the intradivine
structure; her originating in the Universal Soul would be, in his eyes, tantamount to
accepting a Greek philosophical orientation. 36
Elsewhere in his Commentary on the Torah, 37 while capitalizing on texts found in
the Geronese Kabbalists, 38 Recanati introduces a nexus, apparently unknown to
the earlier Catalan Kabbalists, between the cleaving of the individual soul to the
supernal soul and death by a kiss. Apparently this association appears for the first
time in Recanati. 35 This more mystical understanding of the ideal of cleaving is
reminiscent of Abulafia's nexus between the two experiences, although the ecstatic
Kabbalist operated within an Aristotelian rather than a Neoplatonic system. 40
Let me now introduce a quotation from the Geronese Kabbalists Azriel and
Ezra, which Recanati construes in a new way: "When the pious and the men of
deeds [engaged in a state of mental] concentration, and were involved in supernal
mysteries, they imagined, by the power of their thought, that these things were
engraved before them, 41 and when they linked their soul to the Supernal Soul,
these things increased and expanded and revealed themselves ... as when he
cleaved his soul to the Supernal Soul, these awesome things were engraved in his
heart." 42 According to Recanati's mythical interpretation as formulated here, the
Kabbalist should imagine the sefirot as if they were imprinted before his eyes ; then
his soul should adhere on high, and then draw down the divine blessing. 43 This
approach represents what I call the mystical-magical model, one that combines
the ascent of the soul on high, an experience of union with the supernal sources,
and stimulation of the descent of the divine influx. 44
To what extent, we may ask, can an encounter with a literary text incite someone's
imagination and activity in order to encourage application of the recommendations
of that text to practical mystical life? Is a passage written in Gerona, "the crown of
Aragon," capable of inspiring a mystical life in Italy? This question is much more
serious if we assume that Recanati learned everything related to Kabbalah solely
from written documents. Are those short early kabbalistic passages sufficient to
inspire a more experiential understanding and practice of Kabbalah? Or are the quo-
tations no more than a reflection of Recanati's ability to extract the more interesting
passages from the manuscripts he was able to acquire? Unfortunately, the little we
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Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
know about his life and studies does not permit a definitive answer. However, if he
was in fact in Aragon for a while, it might have been there that he came into contact
with a group of Kabbalists who could introduce him to a more practical approach to
these texts. I would opt, however, for the first alternative. Texts describing experi-
ences in the past, even when the author of the text did not necessarily undergo an
experience, may incite experiences later on in other persons.
Most of the quotations above are taken from Recanati's highly influential
Commentary on the Torah, which served as the source for several later Kabbalists
active in Italy: R. Reuven Tzarfati, R. Moshe ben Yoav, and R. Yehudah Hayyat. 45
Recanati is also one of the sources upon which Pico della Mirandola drew for
his concept of the ecstatic "death by a kiss," which reverberated throughout
Renaissance literature as morte di bacio. Medieval Neoplatonism contributed to the
kabbalistic concept of deuequt, which was consonant with the Renaissance
Neoplatonic approach; so it is little wonder that the Florentine Neoplatonists were
so fond of kabbalistic doctrines, which fitted their unique form of philosophical
thought. 46
The discussions of deuequt as preserved and understood by Recanati found their
way to other Kabbalists in Italy, while their traces in later Spanish Kabbalah, where
they were first formulated, are very feeble. For example, another interesting passage
on deuequt quoted by Recanati is found in R. Ezra's Commentary on the Talmudic
'Aggadot, which exists in two manuscripts extant in Rome. 47 Even Spanish Kabbalists
such as R. Yehudah Hayyat copied Recanati's formulations of the Geronese pas-
sages on deuequt, since they lacked direct access to the thirteenth-century Geronese
treatises that inspired him. Does this state of affairs indicate a greater propensity
among the Italian Kabbalists toward mystical experiences of union than among the
Spanish ones? The fact that both the Aristotelian interpretation of deuequt, as exem-
plified in Abulafia's writings, and the Neoplatonic one, as exemplified in Recanati,
flowered in Italy much more than in Spain or elsewhere, and even influenced Pico
and, via him, other Christian thinkers, may be emblematic of the predisposition of
Jewish Kabbalists in Italy to forms of mysticism less influential in Spain, where a
more homogeneous vision of Kabbalah is discernible.
•n6-
9
MENAHEM RECANATI AS A
THEOSOPHICAL-THEURGICAL
KABBALIST
i. Recanatps Theosophy and Its Sources
The theosophical-theurgical model was the dominant form of Kabbalah in Spain
from the time of its emergence under the impact of Provencal traditions brought
there by R. Yitzhaq Sagi Nahor during the early thirteenth century. 1 However, I have
no doubt, as we shall see below, that the actual sources of theurgy and theosophy
are much earlier, occurring not only in Provencal and Ashkenazi sources but in
rabbinic ones as well. Nevertheless, we should not necessarily assume that theurgy
and theosophy always occur together in these earlier sources. In some cases it is
possible to find theosophical discussions without theurgical implication, as in
one of R. Solomon ibn Gabirol's poems or in Ashkenazi Hasidism. 2 However, a
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Recanati as a Kabbalist
theosophical concept of the sefirot appears as early as the tenth century in the
widely influential Commentary on Sefer Yezirah by R. Sabbatai Donnolo, an Italian Jew. 3
As E. R. Wolfson has pointed out, Donnolo may be one of the first medieval Jewish
writers to conceive of the sefirot as part of the divine realm. 4 However, Donnolo's
short passage is a far cry from the more elaborate discussions of this issue by
Provencal and Spanish Kabbalists, who were his direct sources. Recanati was
acquainted with several of the theosophies circulating in Spain, but we may assume
that he adopted and combined two of them, which served as the main sources for
his own theosophical system. One is that of R. Azriel of Gerona, and the second is
that of the latter's younger and more famous compatriot, Nahmanides.
R. Azriel, who belonged to R. Yitzhaq Sagi Nahor's school in Gerona, offered the
most articulate synthesis between a Neoplatonic theory of emanation and mythical
elements found in earlier theosophical traditions, such as Sagi Nahor and Sefer
ha-Bahir. In his theosophical system, the Infinite, the 'Ein Sqf, slowly emerges as a
technical term referring to the distant transcendental deity, while the ten emanations,
the sefirot, are described as instruments of divine activities here below: creation,
providence, or revelation. 5 According to an image used by one of his disciples, the
Infinite is the captain while the ten sefirot are the ship. Although R. Azriel is anxious
to emphasize the connection between the transcendental deity and the emanated
one, the main ontological distinction drawn is not between the created world and the
last of the ten sefirot, but between the first sefirot and the Infinite. In his analysis
Azriel demonstrates awareness of the similarity between kabbalistic and philosophi-
cal theories. In his Commentary on Talmudic 'Aggadot, written sometime in the 1240s,
R. Azriel asserts: "The words of the wisdom of the Torah and the words of the mas-
ters of investigation [ba'alei ha-mehqar; philosophers] mentioned above are identical
[sheneihem ke-'ahat], their way is one, and there is no difference between them, save for
the terms alone, since the investigators did not know how to designate each and every
part by its proper name." 6 Only the Kabbalists, continues R. Azriel, who received tra-
ditions from the prophets, know how to designate each entity appropriately. Although
the Kabbalists possess a higher religious knowledge, the philosophers are not to
be discarded as totally inadequate. This statement refers to Aristotle and Plato, whom
he has quoted immediately before. 7 As other scholars have already shown, these
quotations are in fact entirely Neoplatonic, including a misattribution to Aristotle. 8
R. Azriel of Gerona also refers to the various sefirotic levels, using a distinctive
Plotinian scheme: he posits a hierarchy in which a Hidden World ('01am ha-Ne'elam)
is the highest; this scheme is parallel to the divine will as adumbrated by R. Jacob
ben Sheshet, quoted above, and in other discussions by Azriel. 9 Next in impor-
tance are the Intellectual World ['01am ha-Muskkal]; the Sensory World ['01am
ha-Munjash], which is parallel to the world of the soul in the Plotinian scheme; and
•n8-
Recanati as a Kabbalist
the Natural World ['Olam ha-Murbba']. 10 It seems reasonable to assume that the
source that influenced R. Azriel's view of the spiritual worlds preserved, in one
way or another, the Greek forms of cosmos noetos (the intellectual world) and cosmos
aisthetos (the world of the senses), found in the Neoplatonic literature and reflected
in Azriel's use of the term 'Olam. In general, it seems that Scholem was inclined
to overemphasize the role of the Gnostic aion (supernal world) as the origin of
the kabbalistic pleroma (supernal fullness) 11 and to minimize the influence of
Neoplatonic sources on early Kabbalah when dealing with this specific topic.
Recanati was acquainted with R. Azriel's theosophical views via at least two types
of sources: first, the writings of R. Azriel himself, namely his Commentary on Sefer
Yetzirah and his widely available Sha'ar ha-Sho'el. 12 However, what is more important is
the fact that a commentary on parts of the Sha'ar ha-Sho'el, extant in anonymous
manuscripts, elaborated upon R. Azriel's theosophy. This anonymous text, which I
suggest was written by R. Yitzhaq of Acre, was copied by R. Menahem Recanati and
became a major source for some of his most important discussions on the nature of
the sefirot. 13 Thus, Recanati inherited, directly and indirectly, a brand of theosophy
that envisions the Infinite as Causa Causarum. Recanati often uses the term 'Illat
ha-'IIlot (Cause of the Causes) and only rarely 'Ein SoJ (Infinite), and he refers to the
sefirot as instruments. This is, as I have attempted to show above, a much more
philosophically oriented theology, which creates a distance between the sublime
divine realm and the lower, and dynamic, system of powers that serve Him. Recanati
accepted this view relatively early in his career, as we learn from a lengthy exposition
on the nature of the sefirot at the end of what I consider to be his first extant original
book, the Commentary on the Rationales ojthe Commandments. By locating this discus-
sion at the end of the treatise, Recanati accords it greater importance.
At that time Recanati was already well acquainted with significant portions of
Sefer ha-Zohar, whose theosophy assumes that the sefirot are the essence of God, and
that the supreme deity is inextricably related to the ten sefirot. 14 However, notwith-
standing his recurrent quotations from the Zohar and the reverence in which he
clearly held it as an ancient source, Recanati remained largely unaffected by its the-
osophy. One of the reasons may be that the profoundly midrashic and associative
style of this book resists systematic treatment. Another reason may be that its
strongly mythical imaginaire alienated Recanati. In his later writings, Recanati
demonstrated his acquaintance with a somewhat more articulated though still
rather esoteric treatment of another "essentialist" theosophy, that of R. Moshe ben
Nahman (Nahmanides), as it had been committed to writing by a student of one of
his own students, R. Shem Tov ben Abraham ibn Gaon. Shem Tov's commentary
on the secrets alluded to by Nahmanides in his Commentary on the Pentateuch, titled
Keter Shem Tou, is quoted scores of times in Recanati's Commentary on the Torah. 15
•ng-
Recanati as a Kabbalist
Given the esoteric nature of the discourse that characterizes Nahmanides' book, as
well as the entire school of Nahmanides, Recanati felt no obligation to subscribe to
a vague theosophy, despite the great respect he had for Nahmanides. He neverthe-
less adopted from this school a concept that is quite characteristic of it and, to the
best of my knowledge, unknown earlier. Recanati is very fond of the view that the
last, or lowest, sefirah, Malkhut, is part of the emanative process but is not included
within the divine unity. This divine power was conceived of as integrating within
itself all the attributes of the nine higher sefirot, albeit not constituting a divine
manifestation that is part of the divine essence. In my opinion, Nahmanides and his
school attempted to create a dividing line between the divine and the creatures, and
the last sefirah served as a transient entity that, though emanated, is not fully divine
but possesses the characteristics of a created entity, and is thus linked to the lower
worlds. 16 Thus, the theosophy of R. Azriel was concerned more with explicating the
process of the emergence of the plurality from the unity, while Nahmanides' school
was more inclined to draw the dividing line between a complex divine realm and the
created world. R. Azriel and the school of Gerona close to him subscribed to a
Neoplatonic theory of emanation as producing a nondivine supernal realm. 17
Nahmanides' school embraced a theory of emanation as an inner process within
the divine realm, apparently one found in ancient Jewish writings, which assumes
that the emanated does not distance itself from the supreme emanator.
Recanati combined the transcendental vision of R. Azriel with the Nahmanidean
theory that the last sefirah was an intermediary between the divine and the created.
This synthesis is, to my best knowledge, new with Recanati, despite the fact that
other Kabbalists, such as R. Yitzhak of Acre, were acquainted with both theosophies.
However, Recanati did much more than combine the traits of these two theosophies.
In adopting the concept of sefirot as instruments, he reinterpreted most of the
kabbalistic sources on the theosophy of essence as if they contended with the theory
of sefirot as instruments. In other words, Recanati adopted a theory formulated by
two secondary figures in the history of Kabbalah and imposed it on bodies of literat-
ure that he regarded as far more authoritative: Nahmanides and Sefer ha-Zohar.
Though himself belonging to what I would describe as the first elite, namely those
authors who also created in the domain of Halakhah, Recanati preferred the views of
the secondary elite, as represented by R. Azriel of Gerona and R. Yitzhak of Acre, to
that of the representative par excellence of the first elite, Nahmanides, and the most
ancient and venerated of the kabbalistic books, the Zohar.
What was the reason for such an imposition? I wonder if a definitive answer is
available. However, we may propose several lines of argumentation, which may
somehow clarify Recanati's politics. Recanati believed that R. Azriel of Gerona's
Commentary on Sefer Yezirah had been written by Nahmanides. This mistake may be
Recanati as a Kabbalist
responsible for the attribution to the latter Kabbalist of a theosophy to which he did
not subscribe, one that differentiates between 'Ein Sqfand the ten sefirot. 18 The history
of Kabbalah abounds with such mistakes; however, in this case its impact was more
dramatic. The mistake may reflect the fact that at least the first wave of kabbalistic
material arriving in Italy was not received directly from anyone belonging to the
schools in which the books had originated; there was no initiation and study in a
group, but instead the treatises were circulated in a rather random manner. Unlike
Spain during the first three centuries of the arrival and development of Kabbalah
there, Italy did not create distinct schools of theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah.
Another possible reason may be that this sort of theosophy had been sharply criti-
cized by Abraham Abulafia shortiy before Recanati composed his books. 19 Although
Abulafia indeed did not have an impact on Recanati, I assume that news of the fiery
controversy between Ibn Adret and Abulafia did not escape Recanati's attention.
The emergence of Recanati's adoption of the "instrumental" theosophy requires
a more oblique explanation, though perhaps one more important for understand-
ing his thought in general. Though critical of philosophers, Recanati is fond of
Maimonides' denial of positive attributes with regard to the nature of the Causa
Causarum. However, while agreeing with Maimonides' rejection of the positive attri-
butes on the level of the transcendental deity, he is eager to allow an important role
for this type of attribute when it is understood as referring to the ten sefirot, which
in his view do not constitute the divine essence. Recanati therefore operates in a
rather complex manner: while remaining faithful to Maimonides' denial of positive
attributes, he is also faithful to kabbalistic interpretations of the emanated divinity.
Recanati explicitly rejects a philosophical interpretation of the term sefirot as
designating the effects of the supreme realm in accordance with the preparation of
the lower recipients, left ha-meqabblim. This view, found already in the twelfth-
century thinker R. Abraham ibn Ezra, occurs among some few Kabbalists, who
were anxious not to introduce plurality into a concept of divinity that assumes that
the sefirot are the essence of God. This is the case, for example, of the anonymous
author of the famous Sefer Ma'areldiet ha-'Elohut. I assume that Recanati's rejection
of such a position has to do with his concern to build up a theosophical system
open to interaction of the divine realm with human religious deeds, or what was
described above as theurgy. Too philosophical a stand would solve a theological
problem but would create a much greater religious one, namely a static deity who
is unaffected by the performance of the commandments.
2. Late-Antique and Medieval Theurgy
If the analysis above is correct, we must conclude that the nature of theosophy
must be understood as substantially dependent on the importance of theurgy. A
Recanati as a Kabbalist
more profound understanding of any theology cannot, therefore, be separated
from the broader structure of a certain religious system — in the case of Judaism, a
religion focusing on performance of the commandments. Theologies have no
independent existence, but are correlated with a variety of understandings of the
commandments. The affinity between the two realms, the theosophical and the
ritualistic-performative, is much older than its first formulation in twelfth-century
Kabbalah. However, in Recanati's generation it is well represented by both the
Catalan and Castilian forms of Kabbalah.
This link is obvious in an ancient Gnostic author, Monoimos the Arab, who
was acquainted with Jewish motifs and traditions. His notion of a decad of powers
qua "perfect son" is conceived of as symbolically hinted at by certain biblical
themes: the Ten Commandments and the ten plagues. Accordingly, this Gnostic
presented his view as a symbolic interpretation of biblical themes, an approach
quite reminiscent of the symbolic exegesis of the Bible. The decad represented by
Moses' rod is explicitly connected to the creation of the world and to the ten
plagues: "With that one tittle, the law constitutes the series of the ten command-
ments, which expresses allegorically the divine mysteries of [those] precepts. For,
he says, all knowledge of the universe is contained in what relates to the succes-
sion of the ten plagues and the series of the Ten Commandments." 20 The corre-
spondence among the Ten Commandments, the ten plagues, the decad related to
the rod, and the creation of the world is echoed in a similar correspondence in
Jewish sources among the ten creative words (ma'amarot) , the Ten Commandments,
and the ten plagues. 21 I contend that the decad connected with the Creation is
parallel to the ten ma'amarot. Moreover, the ten plagues symbolize the Creation —
and thus presumably the ma'amarot; and the son of the perfect man, qua "tittle of
iota" — namely, the decad — "is an image of that perfect invisible man." I would
conjecture that the son reflects the nature of the father, 22 just as the ten plagues
symbolically reflect the "symbols of creation." It therefore seems that there were
two decads in Monoimos — the ten plagues and the commandments — and that the
symbols of creation and "divine mysteries" respectively reflect the decad of the son
and of the perfect man.
This theory is corroborated by the existence of two decads, each described by an
anthropomorphic term, in a Coptic Gnostic text. In a fragmentary description of
the creation of man, the anonymous author states: "He made the twenty digits
after the likeness of the two Decads: the Decad that is hidden and the manifested
Decad." 2 ' According to the modern editor of this text, the hidden decad is known
as the "First Man," while the "Anthropos" probably resembles the manifested
decad. 24 This double decad can be meaningfully compared to the ones from the
texts of Monoimos. As in his case, the anonymous author of the Coptic treatise
Recanati as a Kabbalist
was acquainted with Jewish material. 25 Both Gnostic authors also share another,
perhaps less significant feature: the absence of anti-Jewish views, otherwise
widespread in Gnostic literature.
Let us turn from the late-antique affinity between theosophy and theurgy to a
late-thirteenth-century one. While interpreting a talmudic dictum R. Shlomo ibn
Adret, Nahmanides' most important disciple and a contemporary of Recanati,
complains that understanding the Ma'aseh Merkavah (the Account of the Chariot)
in the vein of Greek philosophy is dangerous, since it weakens the performance of
the commandments. His assumption is that the deed should be the starting point,
and that from it someone should understand the intelligibilia (muskkalot) hinted at
within the deed: 26 "and this is the meaning of the Merkavah, because the matters
alluded to by the commandments are the Ma'aseh Merkavah. And Abbayei and
Rawa [two rabbinic authorities] were preoccupied [solely] by the interpretation of
the commandments . . . how precisely they should be performed . . . but not with
explaining and disclosing the rationales hinted at within them . . . whereas
R. Yohanan ben Zakkai has performed the commandments in fact, and he has
concentrated his attention on contemplating their complexion." 27
The performance of the commandments is necessary in order to disclose the
depth of their content: the Merkavah. The rationales can be apprehended only
through the experience of the performance of the commandment itself as the
starting point. This is an explicit rejection of the intellectualist approach, inspired
by Greek philosophy, which emphasized the abstract intent of the commandment
rather than its performance. On his side, Recanati writes: "The commandments
are [all] one thing, and they depend from the supernal Merkavah, each and every
one of them according to their proper activity, and each and every commandment
hangs upon one part of the Merkavah." 28
According to other statements in the same context, the commandments depend
directly upon Causa Causarum. 20 The contention that human religious deeds have an
impact on the divine realm and its processes is old, and persistent in many forms
of religion. Judaism, a performative religion par excellence, contains strong
impulses of theurgy. This term, which combines the Greek words theos, "God,"
and ergon, "activity," conveys the notion that human actions have repercussions
on the divine realm. The term was used in late antiquity and now in modern
scholarship as referring to human purifications intended to elevate the soul to
ascent on high, or to magic in general. I advocate retaining the meaning of
"theurgy" as a concept that deals with action upon God, in order to distinguish it
from magic, understood as directed to achieve material aims. Such a perspective
is found already in rabbinic sources — although modern scholars have been
inclined to regard it as dubious or marginal 30 — and it became a crucial issue in
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Recanati as a Kabbalist
the mainstream of Kabbalah during the thirteenth century. Although Jewish
philosophers — such as Maimonides — and even some few Kabbalists — such as
Abraham Abulafia and R. Yitzhaq ibn Latif — rejected the vision of the command-
ments as influencing the divine realm, the vast majority of Kabbalists subscribed
to this view without apparent reservation; Recanati was one of them and contrib-
uted much to the dissemination of this linkage. As I shall try to demonstrate
below, this intense interest in commandments was crucial to his entire kabbalistic
project, and without our awareness of this fact, his presentation as a theologian
does not do justice to his way of thought, and I assume also of his way of life. I
would say that, in contrast to modern scholars' concern with theosophy, myth,
and symbol, Recanati would place the emphasis on rituals and their impact. He
would invert Mircea Eliade's statement, which is symptomatic of modern scholar-
ship on Kabbalah: "Symbol and myth will give a clear view of the modalities [of the
sacred] that a rite can never do more than suggest." 31 He would be much closer to
Mary Douglas's interest in "the kind of use to which people put their symbols in
everyday life, as regulators or as channels of power. That is, we would attend
to their ideas about ritual efficacy, and less to the structure of their theoretical
orientations." 32
I have mapped in detail elsewhere the main stages of theurgical thought in
Judaism, and recently three other studies have contributed substantial perspec-
tives upon this subject. 33 A vigorous flourishing of interest in theurgy during the
most creative phase of ICabbalah in Spain, in the years 1270-1295, is attested by an
upsurge of lengthy commentaries on the rationales of the commandments. The
voluminous writings of R. Moshe de Leon, Joseph Gikatilla, R. Joseph of Hamadan,
and parts of the Zoharic literature, as well as the anonymous ICabbalist who wrote
Sefer ha-Yihud, a major source of Recanati's thought, reflect this unprecedented
interest. 34 Recanati promoted several forms of theurgy that he found in kabbalistic
sources written in the 1280s and 1290s, but he also capitalized on more extreme
forms reflecting the most recent developments in this domain. Early in his career
Recanati wrote an influential treatise that belongs to the literary genre of commen-
taries on the commandments, his Ta'amei ha-Mitziuot. His explanations there are
rather simple and based mostly on Geronese views. More important are the
numerous discussions on the commandments found in his later and more influ-
ential Commentary on the Torah, which presents a richer range of theurgical perspec-
tives, the result of Recanati's acquaintance with more recent kabbalistic books.
Given that his third kabbalistic book was concerned with another commandment,
prayer, it seems reasonable to conclude that understanding the rationales of the
commandments was his major speculative concern. Let me summarize the main
principles of Recanati's concept of theurgy.
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Recanati as a Kabbalist
Ontologization of the Commandments
Following some views in rabbinic sources, which were emphasized and to some
degree systematized by early Kabbalists, a commandment performed in the mun-
dane world is conceived of as ascending on high and waiting there for the performer
in order to serve him, in one way or another, after his death. So, for example, an
important rabbinic figure interpreting Psalm 112:1-3 asserted that "R. Shmuel ben
Nahmani said in the name of R. Yonathan: Whoever performs a commandment in
this world, it will receive him [meqaddemet 'oto] in the World to Come, as it is said:
' [then shall thy light break forth like the morning . . .] and thy righteousness shall go
before thee [the glory of the Lord shall be thy rearguard].' " 35 Capitalizing on this
passage, R. Ezra of Gerona and, following him, R. Azriel offered a more complex
approach that incorporated the mythical picture in the Talmud within a more elabo-
rated worldview. 36 Recanati quotes R. Ezra's view twice, once briefly in the introduc-
tion to his Commentary on the Rationales of the Commandments and more extensively in
his Commentary on the Torah. Here is Recanati's fuller formulation of this passage:
The performance of a commandment [mitzumh] is the light of life. 37 One
who acts below maintains and sustains [meqayyem u-ma'amid] its power
[kohah] on high, "and he who walks in the ways of light, it [the command-
ment] does not depart from it." This is why when the soul is detached from
his body, that light is like a magnet to that soul, as it is written: "[He has
distributed freely, he has given to the poor,] his righteousness endures for
ever" [Psalms 112:9], because that [divine] manifestation draws her, as it is
written: "his horn shall be exalted with honor" [Psalms 112:9], namely the
splendor of the soul, "for the skin of Moses' face shone" [Exodus 34:35],
and it ascends and stands in a supernal and intimate place, within the glory
of the blessed Holy One. 38
This passage describes a theurgical activity not in the sense that the divine
system is changed by the performance of this commandment, namely that one
divine power is united with another, but in the sense that its ascent on high affects
the supernal world, by a certain augmentation of energy there.
Sympathetic Structures
A well-known view found in a rabbinic text indicates that the number of the com-
mandments is identical with that of all the human limbs, namely 613. Kabbalists
exploited this rather rare view in order to discover precise correspondences
between each of the commandments and the human limb to which it was related.
Building upon the view that in their specific structures the ten sefirot reflect the
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Recanati as a Kabbalist
human body, a threefold correspondence was established among the human and
the divine limbs and the commandments. This correspondence was understood
as being active, namely as implying an effect of the human performance of the
commandments by limbs, on the corresponding divine powers. In late-thirteenth-
century kabbalistic texts written in Castile by R. Joseph of Hamadan, the view that
by performance of the pertinent commandment the human limb strengthens the
divine one, in effect sustaining the supernal limb, was epitomized by the wide-
spread syntagm 'Euer mahaziq (or mehazzeq 'ever), that is, "a [human] limb supports
[or strengthens] a [divine] limb." This effect is the result of human and divine
isomorphism. According to Recanati, "since man was made in the supernal
archetype, when you shall cause the ascent and mounting of each and every
commandment, then the commandment will arrive unto God, blessed be He." 39
Thus, performance of the commandment below induces the influx to dwell
upon the corresponding "commandment" above; in this way, human activity is
ontologized by the concept of the sefirot as commandments. 40 We witness here a
parallel to the formula "a limb supports a limb." The corollary of this position is
that by refraining from performing the commandments or by transgressing,
someone negatively affects the supernal system, weakening power within the
sefirot. Recanati describes the earlier concept that the sefirot "return to their
origin in the 'Depths ofNothingness' " because of human sins as follows: it is "as
if [we] weaken the supernal power, in opposition to what it is written: 'and now, I
pray thee, let the power of my Lord be great.' " 4I Unlike the imperative to enhance
the divine power by performing the commandments, the sins are weakening it.
In the quotation above Recanati draws upon a view — quoted without mention-
ing the source — in an anonymous Castilian treatise titled Sejer ha-Yihud, one of the
most influential sources on Recanati's thought. According to this treatise, not
only will the divine influx retreat from the sefirotic pleroma, but even parts of that
very structure will be contracted to their sources, the depths of nothingness,
because of human transgression, which thereby weakens the divine system. 42
Elsewhere Recanati deals with the multiplication or diminution of the channels of
mercy or judgment as a function of human deeds. 43 Commenting upon Sefer
ha-Yihud's view, Recanati describes human religious activity as being like "making
God": ". . . as if he made Me. As is written: 'It is a time to make God' [Psalm
119:126] : as if to say that whoever transgresses below is as if he transgresses above;
and of this it is said: 'he diminishes the image [of God].' " 44 The diminished image
presumably refers to the sefirotic pleroma. Here again the Kabbalist interprets a
much earlier view, expressed more simply in rabbinic sources. 45
According to another passage, in Recanati's Commentary on the Rationales of the
Commandments, "whoever performs one commandment causes that power to
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Recanati as a Kabbalist
descend upon the same commandment above, out of the 'Annihilation of
Thought,' and he is considered as if he literally maintained one part of the Holy
One, blessed be He." 46 And in his Commentary on the Torah, Recanati again follows
earlier views: "Each commandment is a branch and limb of the Supernal Form, so
that by the completion of the entire Torah the Supernal Man is completed, as each
and every sefirah of the ten sefirot . . . makes, by being linked [together], one
form. " 47 In a rather hyperbolic manner, Recanati claims that "it is incumbent upon
man to contemplate the commandments of the Torah, [to see] how many worlds
he maintains by their performance and how many worlds he destroys by their
neglect." 48 This is one of the most extreme formulations of the extreme impact of
human ritualistic activity, which had a great influence on later kabbalistic views of
the commandments.
Ascent of the Divine Power
According to Recanati, the performance of the commandments has two theurgical
aspects: man can open the supernal source and cause the descent of influx upon the
"commandment," and a lower sefirah can ascend toward a higher sefirah. In his
Commentary on the Torah, the divine Glory, namely the last sefirah, ascends toward
the Tetragrammaton, presumably the sixth sefirah, Tiferet. 49 Even more important
seems to be another discussion, in the context of the meaning of the recitation of
the piece recited at the end of the prayers, titled 'Alenu Ie-shabeah, in which Recanati
presents "the supernal Glory" as longing to ascend to the supernal light. 50 On the
same page Recanati quotes both R. Eleazar of Worms and R. Yehudah he-Hasid
twice. The Ashkenazi presentation of the Glory is an issue of great importance, as
it provides possible evidence that the concept of the dynamism of the Glory pre-
ceded the kabbalistic exploration of the dynamics of the sefirot, which itself served
as one of the starting points for the intradivine kabbalistic processes. 51 Here we
have a special form of the theory of union between the female and male sefirotic
manifestations by the performance of the Jewish ritual. Recanati thus combined
Ashkenazi views — and he was acquainted personally with an Ashkenazi Hasid 52 —
with the kabbalistic views of mystical intention during the performance of the
commandments. It seems that the last two decades of the thirteenth century in
both Spain and Italy witnessed syntheses between Ashkenazi esotericism and
forms of Kabbalah that developed in Catalonia and Castile. 53
•I2 7 -
10
MENAHEM RECANATTS
HERMENEUTICS
i. The Exegetical Imperative
The generation of Jewish scholars before Recanati contributed greatly to kabbalis-
tic hermeneutics, as was mentioned in chapter 5. Both the ecstatic Kabbalists, such
as Abulafia and Yitzhaq of Acre, and the theosophical-theurgical ones, such as the
Castilian Kabbalists, formulated systematic techniques of exegesis. However,
Recanati, who was acquainted with many of these treatments, does not quote them
at all. Though composing a book that invited, in principle, some elaborations on
exegesis, in his main work, the Commentary on the Torah, the Italian Kabbalist does
not indulge in theoretical speculations, describing precisely how secrets were
extracted from the scriptures. In this respect his approach is reminiscent of
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Nahmanides' or R. Shlomo ibn Adret's reticence in formulating exegetical sys-
tems. These three authors belong to what I propose to call the first elite, a layer of
authors who refrained from organizing exegetical methods into a more systematic
structure.
This reticence notwithstanding, Recanati did not refrain from offering his own
kabbalistic interpretations of the Pentateuch and of the various commandments.
In fact he invited everyone to do so, and his encouragement is both explicit and
quite extraordinary in its formulation:
It is incumbent upon us to elevate all these good things, degree after degree,
step after step, until these things arrive at God, blessed be He, who is perfect
without any blemish . . . since every place in the Torah where you are able to
elevate that deed or that commandment to a thing that is higher than it, does
elevate it, and then it will be good to you, despite the fact that you did not
receive that rationale from a kabbalistic sage, or even if you did not see it in
one of the books of the sages. All this [may be done] lest you should say that
this thing is not according to its plain sense but hints at a higher thing. . . .
You should also not say that the rationale that you thought of by yourself is the
principal reason why the Torah, namely that commandment, was revealed.
But you should say that if that commandment had not been promulgated, it
would be worthwhile to be revealed because of this rationale. 1
Recanati's imperative is to elevate — the Hebrew verb is le-ha'alot — namely to
find a nexus between a commandment and a supernal entity to which to relate it.
This exegetical elevation should not consist in a denial of the plain sense of the
commandment; rather, the kabbalistic explanation is to be understood as a link
between an action and a supernal entity. Thus, the Italian Kabbalist strives to
maintain the paramount importance of performance of the commandment even
after discovering the kabbalistic sense. Discovering the sublime secrets of
Kabbalah should therefore not preclude the performance of the commandments
by Kabbalists in the mundane world. However, the emphasis is on the necessity to
discover rationales, which are theosophical, and thus transform the performance
into a theurgical act.
The method of discovery is very important. Recanati is aware of the existence of
oral traditions, which were kept as esoteric teachings, as well as of the kabbalistic
literature dealing with the rationales of the commandments. However, Recanati
does insist that if someone does not receive rationales in the two ways, oral and
written, someone should find out a rationale by himself, by using his own reason.
By offering this third source for rationales of the commandments, Recanati inserts
his Kabbalah into the innovative trend of Kabbalah, which was ready to allow, and
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Recanatts Hermeneutics
even encourage, the independent spiritual exegetical literature. He is perhaps the
first of the Kabbalists who belongs to the first elite and nevertheless allows such a
free exegetical activity.
I assume that this freedom is part of the existential situation of this Kabbalist.
Assuming that he acquired most if not all of his kabbalistic knowledge from writ-
ten documents, and lacking any name of a kabbalistic master who introduced
Recanati to Kabbalah, we witness here the beginning of a new process in the his-
tory of Kabbalah. It may be that Recanati was the first Kabbalist to be born and
educated, for at least most of his life, outside a center of kabbalistic learning. 2
Recanati does not emerge from a certain kabbalistic school, nor does he subscribe
to any of them in a definitive manner, and this noncommittal attitude opened the
way to a greater receptiveness to exegetical innovations. Apparently Nahmanides'
interdiction on innovating kabbalistic secrets by using reason — a policy adopted
by most of his followers — was less relevant in Italy. Thus Recanati, a figure belong-
ing to a first elite, inscribes himself in a line of intellectual activity characteristic of
the secondary elite, just as he does when he imposes R. Azriel's instrumental
theosophy — stemming from a figure in the secondary elite — upon Nahmanides'
essentialist one, deriving from the first elite.
2. On Symbols in Recanatps Kabbalah
The main tool for the elevation of scriptural discussions related to the higher enti-
ties is the symbolic interpretation of the sacred texts. Recanati's recommendation
should be understood in this specific context, as promoting a textual exegesis
but not a symbolic interpretation of reality or history. By being so specifically
text-oriented, the Italian Kabbalist can help us better understand the gist of
the kabbalistic symbolic project, which deals predominantly with adding new
theosophic meanings to the plain sense of the canonical texts.
Let me survey first what I would designate as the pansymbolic perception of
modern scholars, which assumes that the Kabbalists perceived not only sacred
scriptures but also reality as possessing symbolic valences. So, for example, we
read in an essay by Isaiah Tishby dedicated to kabbalistic symbolism: "the
Kabbalistic symbols are not only means for understanding reality, or ways of
expression, but the entire reality is conceived of as a texture of symbols for divinity,
and the vision of the existents without understanding the significance that is
hidden within them, is a flawed vision." 3 A less grandiose attempt to explain the
sources of the kabbalistic symbols is found in one of Scholem's essays, where he
characterizes the kabbalistic symbols as "symbols of a very special kind, in which
the spiritual experience of the mystics was almost inextricably intertwined with
the historical experience of the Jewish people. It is this interweaving of two realms,
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which in most other religious mysticisms have remained separate, that gave
Kabbalah its specific imprint." 4 Elsewhere Scholem reinforces this historically
oriented explanation of symbolism: "The more sordid and cruel the fragment of
historical reality allowed to the Jew amid the storms of exile, the deeper and more
precise the symbolic hope which burst through it and transfigured it." 5
Despite numerous attempts to tie kabbalistic symbolism to nonscriptural matters,
there is little evidence to support the too-comprehensive visions attributed to
Kabbalists. They were apparentiy not concerned with nature or history, and did not
transform them into symbols. Had they done so, we could learn something from
their symbolism about their experiences and historical setting. However, the poor
information we have about the lives of the Kabbalists — and Recanati is a perfect
example — leaves us unable to extrapolate from the symbols to the historical events,
the places, or the persons contemporary with the Kabbalah. As I have argued else-
where, not all the kabbalistic literature is symbolic, and even in the theosophical-
theurgical Kabbalah, symbols are of different sorts, and we would do better to analyze
individual Kabbalists' use of symbols before generalizing prematurely about the
nature of kabbalistic symbolism. Such an approach has been applied already in the
cases of Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut and of R. Joseph Gikatilla. 6
Let us now examine Recanati's writings to see whether they indeed corroborate
scholars' impressions about a pansymbolist approach. Like many other theosophic-
theurgic Kabbalists, Recanati adopted a modest approach, restricting himself to the
interpretation of biblical and rabbinic issues, commandments and stories. His fear
that the plain sense of the sacred scriptures would become problematic for an intel-
lectual may be related to the allegorical exegesis of the Jewish philosophers, which
reveals a reluctance to create embarrassment for more conservative Jews concerned
with maintaining the traditional halakhic approach. I assume that this is also the
case with Recanati, and it seems that at least in one major case he should be under-
stood as reacting to a philosophical interpretation to what I propose to call a primary
symbol in Judaism. Such a tension between the old and new elements is more evi-
dent when the absorption of new elements is a very massive one, or when some of
these novel elements reflect a religious or intellectual sensibility that conflicts sub-
stantially with some of the core symbols of the adopting structure. The more central
the symbol that is interpreted in a new manner, the greater the potential conflict. If
a symbol interpreted in a new way is a primary one, 7 it can easily involve a confronta-
tion between its traditional concept and the novel one. The secondary symbols are
less liable to provoke strong resentments among more traditionalist figures when
these symbols are transposed into different keys.
As we saw in chapter 9, Recanati, like other Kabbalists, created a very strong
linkage between the commandments and the Divine Chariot, the Merkavah. In my
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opinion, the divine chariot should be seen as a primary symbol, since it had a deep
influence on many issues in Jewish mysticism, and (as we shall see below) it orga-
nizes the structure of one of the central issues in Judaism, the commandments. 8
Let us look at how Recanati portrays the philosophical understanding of the divine
chariot:
[The philosophers] . . . have no part or heritage whatsoever in the secrets of
the Torah and the secrets of our sages, and it would be better to refrain from
[dealing with] the commandments and the homilies [of the sages] rather
than speaking about them, distorting their [authentic] meaning, and pro-
posing a rationale for them with which even children are acquainted. Look
at the third part of the Guide, and you will know their [the philosophers']
issues. And if that wisdom is a wisdom, know indeed and explicitly that it
[philosophy] is not the wisdom of our Torah, since they did not believe [in
anything] except in matters that they derived by logical demonstration, and
they interpreted all the Sitrei Torah according to the Greek wisdom, and the
Merkavah "came up and went out of Egypt" [i Kings 10:29] ■'
Indeed, in another book Recanati asserts that philosophers reject issues con-
nected to the words of prayer and Ma'aseh Merlmuah. 10 Immediately afterward he
attacks Maimonides himself." Jewish philosophers in general, and Maimonides in
particular, distorted the traditional esoteric issues by interpreting them according
to Greek philosophy. They presented the secrets of the Jews as if they stemmed from
alien sources, referred to as "Egypt." In the same place Recanati also mentions the
Merlcauah in a context that clearly deals with the meaning of the commandments. As
we have seen above, Recanati explicitly connects the rationales of the command-
ments with the Merlmuah; we therefore have in his approach a clear criticism of the
Maimonidean view of the commandments based upon Recanati's rejection of the
philosophical conception of the Merkavah as stemming from external sources. Is it
sheer coincidence that the vast body of kabbalistic literature dealing with Ta'amei
ha-MitzuJot flourished in the hundred years following Maimonides' attempt to
propose rationales, which Kabbalists conceived as being innovations? However, my
proposal should not be understood too simplistically; the symbolic mode was much
more than a reaction to Maimonides' and other philosophers' allegorical exegesis.
As we saw in the quotations from Monoimos the Arab in the previous chapter, the
Ten Commandments and the ten plagues were understood as "symbols of creation"
on the one hand and as divine mysteries on the other, in an approach in which
theosophy and theurgy were deeply intertwined.
To counteract this interpretation, Kabbalists in the thirteenth century, and
Recanati after them, portrayed the divine chariot as the preeminent symbol of the
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divine potencies, the sefirot. 12 This explanation of the origin of symbolism as
strongly dependent on the status of the rituals seems to me one of the main ways
to conceptualize the emergence of the theosophic-theurgic Kabbalah, although it
is difficult to adduce decisive proofs for this explanation. 13 However, in the case of
Recanati it seems that there is indeed a nexus between a philosophical interpreta-
tion described explicitly as alien, and the kabbalistic symbolic approach to the
Merkavah, In other words, the symbolic hermeneutics of these Kabbalists should
be better understood as an attempt to counteract the allegorical monosemic code,
historically stemming from an alien source, which was conceived of as subverting
the plain sense of the sacred texts. As we saw in the passage above, for Recanati
the battle was between the philosophers' interpretation of the secrets of the Torah,
understood as identical with, or at least similar to, Aristotelian philosophy, and
the kabbalistic appropriation of these secrets in symbolic terms.
If this explanation is correct, the crystallization of the symbolic mode in Kabbalah
is part of a comprehensive conflict between Aristotelian noetics when applied to
scripture, and a growing theosophical system stemming from both earlier Jewish
sources and Neoplatonic ontology, which invited a more Neoplatonic noetics and a
more nebulous and polysemic approach to the canonical texts. Indeed, scholars
have described the Zohar, the most important kabbalistic corpus using symbols in a
creative way, as a reaction to Maimonides. 14 This general observation is also perti-
nent to the symbolic hermeneutics of Kabbalah. To understand better the scriptural
nature of the symbolic code, we should introduce Umberto Eco's semiotics. 15 The
use of the concept of code is particularly pertinent in the kabbalistic systems, where
the sefirot are conceived of not as essentially divine powers but as instruments of
divine activities. The quandary involved in knowing the divine system understood as
consisting of sefirot as instruments and symbolized by scriptural terms is much
smaller than it may be in the essential systems; in my opinion, even in these systems
the Kabbalist was acquainted with the signijie, the sefirotic system and its details,
before he started the exegetical enterprise. I am inclined to see Scholem's vision of
the symbol as expressing an inexpressible entity or process, and its more recent
exaggerations as the result of the impact of an apophatic approach, namely a nega-
tive theology that is characteristic of Western Christian mystical thought. 16
Let us look at the kataphatic, or positive theological, approach found in
Recanati's discussion of elevation. In the introduction to his Commentary on the
Rationales of the Commandments, he writes: "The commandments of the Torah are
divided into many categories, 17 and all of them depend on one power, which is
Causa Causarum, blessed be He and His Name. And each and every commandment
has a great principle ['Iqar Gadol] and hidden rationale, which is not understood
from any of the other commandments except via this [specific] commandment,
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which discloses the secret." 18 The epistemology that informs this statement
assumes that the commandments are the specific venue for understanding the
corresponding sefirotic powers or aspects. Thus, we may assume that the cultiva-
tion of the Jewish ritual was both a modus vivendi and a modus rognescendi. The
commandments therefore function as symbols that allow the practitioners to
intuit the structure of the supernal world. These direct statements are reminiscent
of the correspondences between plagues and the decadic anthropos mentioned
above in chapter 9, in the name of the Gnostic Monoimos the Arab. There, too, the
creative powers are related to human activities, the Ten Commandments. In the
cases of both the ancient Gnostic and Recanati, as we shall see immediately below,
the supernal world contains all the information that concerns what is going on
here below. So, for example, Recanati writes, in the context of the quotations
adduced above in our discussions of the Merkavah and commandments: "The
sages of Kabbalah said that the secret of the seven days of creation hint at what is
past, is present, and will be in the future." 19
Thus, the symbolic structure is not only a matter of understanding the symbolic
valence of the sacred scripture, which is indeed the most important function of the
symbolic mode, but also an experiential mystical dimension of the Kabbalist as a
performer. Let me address now a much more literary treatment of the symbolic
mode. In his Commentary on the Torah Recanati writes: "From all these matters you
may know that all the stories of the Torah have their principle on high. And
because they are on high, they are, in any case, generating fruits upon the world
below, in their likeness, like the light that emerges from the sun. This is the reason
why you may find in the Torah issues that may seem, on their plain sense, super-
fluous. But when you elevate these matters [to a position] opposite the face of the
supernal candlestick, they will illumine, as it is written: 'Take the veil from my eyes
that I may see the marvels that spring from thy law' [Psalms 119:18] ." 2 °
The principle of elevation is mentioned here in a discussion of the nonritualistic
aspects of the Bible, just as Recanati deals with the commandments in the quota-
tions analyzed earlier. Thus the two major subject matters of the Bible, stories and
ritual, are conceived of as intimately related to the supernal world, which is the
principle that informs the meaning of the lower world. From the epistemological
point of view, Recanati does not seem to be much concerned with the matters of the
ineffability of the divine and the indescribability of the hidden, in contrast to mod-
ern scholars. In fact, the lower is conceived of as a type of copy, through which the
knowledgeable Kabbalist is able to find out its original on high. Such a strong rela-
tionship is portrayed in two seminal statements on the relationship between the
higher and the lower and between the human body and the sefirotic realm. In his
Commentary on the Torah Recanati asserts: "All the supernal things are generating
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their paradigm here below." 21 More conspicuous is the view expressed earlier in the
same treatise:
Man comprises all the supernal [entities]. His hands hint at the arms of the
world; the tongue and the circumcision correspond to the two preponderant
[Powers] , and also the spinal cord [corresponds] to the first preponderant
[Power] . The legs correspond to the branches. The heart corresponds to the
Great Sea or its [female] companion. And these signs are made in the like-
ness of the supernal [entities] .... And this is the reason why man is a
microcosm, as he comprises everything. All his limbs are in likeness and
sign for the supernal [entities], as it is said: "From my flesh I shall see God"
[Jobig:2o]. 22
Let me first explain the symbolic valences of the terms used in the passage. The
two preponderant powers are the two sefirot Tiferet and Yesod. Tiferet, the sixth
sefirah, is the first preponderant power, since it mediates between the two sefirot
Hesed and Gevurah. These two sefirot are mentioned at the very beginning of the
passage as the arms of the world. The second preponderant power is the ninth
sefirah, which mediates between the two legs, which correspond to the sefirot
Netzah and Hod. This sefirah is a predominantly male potency. The heart symbol-
izes the last sefirah, Malkhut, which is predominantly female. Those sefirot are
the supernal entities, corresponding to the human limbs.
In this passage Recanati capitalizes on different kabbalistic traditions: the
concept of the two preponderant powers is unique to Nahmanides' kabbalistic
school; 23 the vision of man as comprising all the sefirot is drawn from R. Ezra of
Gerona. 24 From the Book o/Bahir he took the correspondences between the human
and supernal limbs. 25 Last but not least: the terms pointing to symbolic relations,
sign and likeness, reflect the impact of a seminal passage by R. Joseph Gikatilla
on the symbolic relationship. 26 This is a perfect example of mosaic writing,
combining several kabbalistic schools.
However, Recanati does not just put together disparate sources; he also
imposes a unifying theme. He brings together the particular correspondences
between the seven lower sefirot and the human body from the Book o/Bahir and the
general principle of the human body as comprising ten sefirot from R. Ezra in
order to subvert the anti-anthropomorphic stand of R. Joseph Gikatilla. Whereas
the Castilian Kabbalist, and even Recanati himself elsewhere, used these terms to
undercut the anthropomorphic implications of the human-sefirotic similarities,
by emphasizing a functional rather than formal relation between the higher and
the lower, Recanati refers in this passage to a conspicuously anthropomorphic
structure. Man, in fact the ICabbalist, is able to see, namely to contemplate God, by
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starting from his own bodily structure. This is a leitmotif in Kabbalah, 27 and the
symbolic function is to encourage this form of formulaically expressed relation-
ship to God. However, despite the principle that everything on high generates its
likeness on the mundane level, it seems that nothing like a pansymbolic strategy
can be pinpointed in Recanati. By emphasizing the anthropomorphic structure as
a starting point for a theory of symbolism, Recanati and his sources explicate a
basic theological stand of the Bible: that man is created in the image of God. 28
Let us ponder the way in which the different terms establishing or reflecting
relations between the two levels of reality are used. The term translated as "para-
digm," in Hebrew dugma', is a loan from the Greek, and it points to the downward
relationship. The higher generates the lower, which thus reflects the original. The
terms translated as "sign" and "likeness," in Hebrew siman and dimyon, reflect
the more cognitive move upward. It is not a creational move but rather a return to
the origin. From this point of view, the study and performance of the Bible should
be understood not simply as interpreting the sense of the book, but as finding the
truth, to refer to the distinction made by Spinoza. 29 However, whereas for the
philosopher finding out the truth may be seen as much more an exegetical exer-
cise, in the case of Recanati, interpretation and ritualistic activity are a direct
encounter with the supernal reality. Elevation is not solely a deciphering of the
meaning or a performance of a commandment, but an act of retracing the emana-
tional process and ascending to the source. This ascent is not a merely cognitive
one, a dim intuition of a reality that escapes human perception but is feebly
reflected in the symbol, as modern scholars claim that the kabbalistic symbols do,
but a much more controlled journey in the structure of the divinity. In his intro-
duction to Ta'amei ha-Mitziuot Recanati writes: "Man has been made in the supernal
paradigm, and so, when you elevate and dignify each and every commandment so
that it arrives at God, blessed be His name, you will understand its meaning." 30
3. God as To rah, or To rah as God
In the writings of two Kabbalists flourishing at the end of the thirteenth century
and the beginning of the fourteenth, we find a formula that conveys a total identi-
fication of the Torah, that is, the Pentateuch, with God. The first text is a late-
thirteenth-century Castilian treatise named Sefer ha-Yihud, which deeply influenced
Recanati, as we have mentioned above. In his introduction to the Commentary on the
Rationales of the Commandments, he writes: "All the sciences altogether are hinted at
in the Torah, because there is nothing that is outside Her [the Torah]. . . .
Therefore, the Holy One, blessed be He, is nothing that is outside the Torah, and
the Torah is nothing that is outside Him, and this is the reason why the sages
of the Kabbalah said that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the Torah." 31
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The identity established between the author and the book reinforces the two
central religious values in Judaism, but it also changes them. The book becomes
tantamount to the divine, while the divine is now conceived of as the Torah. It
seems to me that this is quite a logical development in a religion based on a book,
but it develops some forms of extreme mysticism. Sefer ha-Yihud is a work that,
though extant in many manuscripts, has not attracted the due attention of schol-
ars. This treatise, I would dare to say, is one of the most important kabbalistic
writings of the thirteenth century, and one that had a special impact on all of
R. Menahem Recanati's kabbalistic writings. Recanati's book containing the
passage on the Torah as God is indeed extant in many manuscripts and is among
the first kabbalistic writings to be printed. However, unlike other writings of this
Kabbalist, which were translated into Latin and had a great influence on Pico della
Mirandola's Christian Kabbalah, this one was not translated into any European
languages, and its striking identification between author and book apparently
did not leave any mark on the development of modern hermeneutics. There is,
however, one major exception.
Recanati's passage discussed above was translated and briefly discussed in a
major study by Gershom Scholem, dealing with the concept of the Torah in
Kabbalah, originally delivered in German as a lecture at the Eranos conference at
Ascona in 1954. As sometimes happens with these lectures, it was printed in paral-
lel English and French translations in the UNESCO journal for humanities, titled
respectively Diogenes and Diocjene. For our purposes, the French translation, done
by a very distinguished scholar of Judaica in Paris, Georges Vajda, is salient. It was
printed in 1955-1956. 32 In Vajda's translation the passage reads as follows: "Car la
Torah n'est pas en dehors de Lui, pas plus qu'il n'est Lui-meme en dehors de la
Torah." 33 This is a faithful translation, without being very literal. Nonetheless, the
Hebrew original has nothing like "il n'est Lui-meme en dehors de la Torah,"
because the term "Torah" that occurs in this phrase is an explication of a demon-
strative Hebrew pronoun, mimmenah, "outside her." In the interest of making
clearer the meaning of the text, the demonstrative pronoun has been fleshed out,
and translated as if it were written hutz me-ha-Torah, "outside the Torah." The dif-
ference is a matter of style not of content, but it nevertheless shows how the French
phrase emerged. The fact that this statement about the identity between the Torah
and God was available in French in 1957 may account for the occurrence of one of
the most famous statements in postmodern literary criticism: "There is nothing
outside the text." Jacques Derrida could easily have had access to the French trans-
lation, and absorbed it for his own purposes, as he did in the context of another
important statement found in another Kabbalist active in Italy, namely Abraham
Abulafia. 34 In lieu of Recanati's "there is nothing outside Her," namely outside the
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Torah, Derrida enunciated that "there is nothing outside the text," — "il n'y a rien
hors de texte" or, according to another version, "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte." 35 Thus,
he substituted the term "text" for "Torah." Derrida's De grammatologie was first
printed in 1967, ten years after publication of the French translation of Scholem's
article. Recanati's use of the phrase "there is nothing outside" in a theosophical
sense, namely that there is nothing outside God, is found already in the thought of
R. Azriel of Gerona, who deeply influenced Recanati's theosophy. 36 However, the
Catalan Kabbalist was much more concerned with a view of the divine will,
whereas Recanati, influenced by Castilian Kabbalah, expanded the pantheistic
view to apply to God Himself. 37
The inclusion of everything in the Torah is interesting also from the point of
view of Recanati's symbolism. Reality, even God, is significant, since it is found
within the Torah. The secular reality, namely his life in history, cannot possess a
symbolic meaning, and this emphasis on the importance of the words and letters
of the Pentateuch may well explain why we know so little about Recanati's life and
historical circumstances, and so much about his symbolic exegesis.
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II
ECSTATIC KABBALAH FROM
THE FOURTEENTH THROUGH
MID-FIFTEENTH CENTURIES
i. Continuities in Ecstatic Kabbalah in Italy
The kabbalistic writings of Abraham Abulafia and Menahem Recanati did not
simply survive in manuscripts, copied in a servile manner in the following
generations. In fact they excited interest in the various forms of Jewish mystical
lore among later generations of Kabbalists in several centers of Jewish culture,
especially in Italy and the Byzantine Empire, though almost not at all in the
Iberian peninsula. These two corpora were continued while also appropriating
other forms of speculative literatures, kabbalistic or philosophical. Thus, although
there was no pure school of either Abulafia or Recanati that continued their
teachings in their pristine form, both thinkers exerted substantial and distinctive
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influences upon other Kabbalists. In the case of Recanati both the numerous
manuscripts of his writings surviving in Italy and his family's preservation of his
oeuvre indicate his centrality in the development of Kabbalah in this Jewish center
of culture.
We have already seen that elements of theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah were
introduced from Spain beginning in the fourteenth century and were adopted in
Italy, mainly through the wide influence of the anonymous early-fourteenth-
century Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut, written in Catalonia. In Recanati's family there is
solid evidence of an interest in theosophical Kabbalah, although his descendants
did not echo his views in their kabbalistic treatises. 1 In contrast, Abulafia's ecstatic
Kabbalah strongly influenced a significant number of Kabbalists not only in Italy
but also in the Byzantine Empire and the land of Israel. Here we shall be concerned
only with its repercussions in Italy.
We noted at the end of chapter 2 the existence of kabbalistic treatises whose
views strongly echo Abulafia's ecstatic Kabbalah. So closely do these books
resemble one another that even as great an expert on Kabbalah as Gershom
Scholem concluded that they were Abulafia's own writings, and it required a sus-
tained philological effort to demonstrate that this was not the case but rather that,
given the conceptual and terminological diversity conspicuous in these writings,
we must assume the existence of more than one anonymous Kabbalist who com-
posed these works. 2 With the exception of R. Nathan ben Sa'adyah Harar's Sefer
Sha'arei Tzedeq, which is evidently the work of a direct student of Abulafia's, we do
not know whether the Kabbalists who wrote two of the most important ecstatic
writings, Sefer Ner 'Elohim 3 and Sefer ha-Tzeruf 4 — among other anonymous ecstatic
treatises — were direct disciples of the founder of ecstatic Kabbalah. I assume the
possibility that these works were written in the early fourteenth century in Italy,
perhaps in Sicily. Sefer ha-Tzeruf survives in two different versions and was quite
widely available, if we are to judge by the substantial number of manuscripts in
which they are extant. It was translated into Latin in the fifteenth century by Flavius
Mithridates and was studied by and influential on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. 5
In the manuscripts in which this work survives there are also a variety of anony-
mous short treatises that I identify as either Abulafia's or as belonging to the
ecstatic school; these still await a full analysis.
Although we may discern a strong Abulafian influence in some of the works
discussed below, we must also consider to what extent those Kabbalists were going
beyond Abulafia's distinctive Aristotelian-Maimonidean blend of perspectives. In
my opinion, they reflect a process of differentiation within ecstatic Kabbalah, and
the nature of this diversification will be one of the major preoccupations of this
chapter. In any case, it should be pointed out that by its nature, ecstatic Kabbalah
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is a more open form of knowledge than the theosophical-theurgical one. Whereas
in some of the schools belonging to the latter trend the focus was on oral or written
conceptual transmission, with key concepts being handed down from master to
student, in ecstatic Kabbalah transmission was understood as more practical,
focusing on initiating students into the manner of practicing techniques that
would allow them to pursue a variety of directions on their own. 6 As we saw earlier,
Abulafia himself praised his student Joseph Gikatilla for adding to his own
knowledge from Abulafia's. 7 Elsewhere Abulafia wrote that "whatever is transmit-
ted concerning this lore constitutes a 'head of chapter,' and this is why it needs the
intellect, and it is called intellectual Kabbalah 8 because it is not like the other
sciences, namely the propaedeutic ones, which are transmitted alone. . . . But this
lore, known as Kabbalah, is impossible to transmit in toto in an oral manner, and
not even in written form, even over [a period of] thousands of years. And whatever
a Kabbalist attempts to interpret, everything is a hint and a 'head of chapter.' " 9 The
affinity between the creative and the intellectual Kabbalah is quite important, and,
as we shall see immediately below, creativity and speculation are also connected to
each other in other cases in ecstatic Kabbalah. 10
2. On Death by the Kiss in Ecstatic Kabbalah
A common denominator of Sejer ha-Tzeruf and of R. Nathan's Sejer Sha'arei Tzedeq
is the presence of Neoplatonic terminology, which is marginal in Abulafia's
authentic writings. However, both Sejer ha-Tzeruf and Sejer Ner 'Elohim retain
his strong emphasis upon the experiential aspects of Kabbalah in presenting
techniques for achieving mystical experiences. This more Neoplatonic proclivity
may be the result of the anonymous ecstatic Kabbalists' absorption of kabbalistic
material that was either not known to Abulafia or not accepted by him.
Before analyzing the topic of ecstatic death — a motif that had a great impact on
the Renaissance in Italy — as found in some of the anonymous Kabbalists who
followed Abulafia's path, we need to understand the shift from a more Aristotelian
to a more Neoplatonic orientation. Let me start with a relatively early anonymous
passage, apparently authored by a Geronese Kabbalist, where strong Neoplatonic
terms and ways of thought are conspicuous. Dealing with the legend of the four
sages who entered the mystical Pardes, the unknown Kabbalist writes about the
first of these sages:
"Ben Azzai looked and died." 11 He gazed at the radiance of the Shekhinah
like a man with weak eyes who gazes into the full light of the sun, and his
eyes are dimmed, and at times he is blinded by the intensity of the light that
overwhelms him. Thus it happened to ben Azzai: the light overwhelmed
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him, and he gazed at it because of his great desire to cleave to it and to enjoy
it without interruption, and after he cleaved to it he did not wish to be
separated from that sweet radiance, and he remained immersed and hidden
within it. And his soul was crowned and adorned, and [possessed] that very
radiance and brightness to which no man may cling and afterward live, as is
said, "for no man shall see Me and live" [Exodus 33:20]. But ben Azzai
gazed at it only a little while, and then his soul departed and remained
[there] and was hidden away in the place of its cleaving, which is a most
precious light. And this death was the death of the pious, whose souls are
separated from all concerns of the lowly world, and whose souls cleave to
the ways of the supernal world. 12
This passage does not reveal any special concern with theosophical Kabbalah,
although I assume that the author was acquainted with this form of thought. It
seems rather that the author may have drawn upon a philosophical source. In one
of the epistles of Ilduuan al-Safa, an important collection of treatises belonging to
the Shi'ite sect known as Ismailis, the spiritual development of the soul is described
as follows: "When the soul awakens from the sleep of negligence and the slumber
of foolishness . . . and is cleansed from material habits ... it escapes and experi-
ences its resurrection, it becomes luminous, and its substance is brilliant and its
gaze is sharpened. It then beholds the spiritual forms, contemplates the eternal
substances of light, and beholds the hidden things and secret mysteries. . . .
Having contemplated these hidden things, it clings to them, even as the lover
clings to the beloved. It becomes one with them, as light unites with lights, and
remains eternally with them in bliss." 13
The vision of light while in the ecstatic state at the time of death is similar to
what is found in a text probably belonging to the cluster of treatises related to Sefer
ha-'Iyyun, or Book of Contemplation. A passage appearing in several manuscripts
belonging to this cluster asserts: "From the time that the righteous person
departs to his eternal home, he sees the light of the sphere of the intellect, and
immediately he departs, as if the Holy One, blessed be He, has created it and made
it known to the eye. And Moses saw the light of the [supernal firmament called]
Zebul, and immediately died. And why all this? Because the body has no strength
to withstand it." 14
In contrast, Abulafia's contemporary active in Spain, R Isaac ibn Latif, writes
in a more Aristotelian vein: "When the human intellect actually cleaves to the intel-
ligibilia, which are the Agent Intellect, [the leaving] is [in the] the form of the
kiss." 15 Here the intellect rather than the soul is the subject of the mystical experi-
ence. Similarly, the much later R Moshe Narboni quotes from a commentary on
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Averroes' On the Possibility of Conjunction, which describes the "preparation" to
cleave to the Agent Intellect: "Let Him kiss him with the kisses of His mouth, and
let him receive the agent intellect in the light of his soul which rises upon her." 16
Whereas Abulafia himself was much more inclined toward an Aristotelian expres-
sion of the mystical death, his followers and R, Menahem Recanati adopted
Neoplatonic expressions for explaining this experience. I did not find any evidence
that Recanati's discussions of death by the kiss influenced Abulafia's followers, 17 but
I assume that the short treatise from the circle of Sefer ha-'Iyyun had arrived in Italy,
since it is found in at least two Italian manuscripts. There it influenced the perception
of the mystical death in an ecstatic treatise, the anonymous Sefer ha-Tzeruf:
When the soul is separated from the body, she has already apprehended the
purpose of [all] purposes and has cleaved to the light beyond which there is
no other light, and takes part in the life that is the bundle of all life and the
source of all life, and he is like one who kisses something that he loves
utterly, and he is unable to cleave to it until this time. And this is the secret
of the kiss spoken of regarding the patriarchs, of whom it is said that they
died with the kiss : that is, that at the moment that they departed they attained
the essence of all apprehensions and above all degrees, because the inter-
ruptions and all the obstacles that are in the world left them, and the intel-
lect returned to cleave to that light which is the [Agent] Intellect. And when
he cleaves to truth, this is the true kiss, which is the purpose of all [spiritual]
degrees. 18
In the other version of this book we read:
Know that when the sphere of the intellect is turned about by the Agent
Intellect, and man begins to enter it and ascends into the sphere that revolves
upon itself, as in the image of the ladder, and at the time of ascent, his
thoughts will be indeed transformed, and all the images will change before
him, and nothing of all that he previously had will be left in his hands; there-
fore, apart from the change in his nature and his formation, [he will be]
as one who is translated from the power of sensation to the power of the
intellect, and as one who is translated from the tellurian process to the pro-
cess of burning fire. Finally, all the visions shall change, and the thoughts
will be confounded and the imaginative apprehensions will be confused,
since in truth this sphere purifies and tests. 19
The subject of the experience is described as a soul, the object of its cleaving as
the sphere of intellect. These features and the image of light are all much more
common in Neoplatonic literature than in Aristotelian thought. In the latter, the
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soul does not cleave to anything but the intellect. Moreover, the intellect cleaves to
the Agent Intellect and not to the sphere of intellect, a locution that stands for the
idea of the empyrean, the highest heaven. 20 In the two passages, which comple-
ment each other as they describe different experiences of the sphere of intellect,
Neoplatonism and Aristotelian terminology are combined.
From Italy this understanding of ecstatic death had an impact on a classic of
Kabbalah composed at the end of the fourteenth century in the Byzantine Empire;
the anonymous author of Sefer ha-Peliy'ah drew a connection between the passage
from the circle of Sefer ha-'Iyyun and the image of the kiss:
Know that at the time that the righteous person departs to his eternal abode,
he sees the light of the sphere of the intellect, and his soul immediately
departs and leaves the body. And know that he is shown it in accordance
with the level of that righteous person and his cleaving to that light, and he
immediately cleaves [to it] , for there is no strength in the body to withstand
the soul's longing when it sees that light; and Moses, as soon as he saw the
light of the dwelling of the supernal Zebul, immediately cleaves there. And
the vision of the light that is visible to the righteous whose soul is there is
called the kiss. 21
Here, as in Sefer ha-Tzeruf death is the cause of ecstasy, and not vice versa. If my
conjecture is correct about the existence of the small treatise from the literature
clustered around Sefer ha-'Iyyun in Italy and its influence on Sefer ha-Tzeruf we have
an example of the transmission of Kabbalah from Spain to Italy and then to the
Byzantine Empire, with ecstatic Kabbalah being instrumental in this mediation.
Although Abulafia's disciples generally accepted his system, they seem to
have been unaware of the subtle but important distinction between literal and
mystical death. Thus, even while basing themselves upon Abulafia, they repeated
Maimonides' formulations regarding the separation between the body and the
soul. Mystical death becomes an ideal, projected onto ancient heroes. So, for
example, an anonymous Kabbalist, plausibly writing in Italy, and perhaps related
to Abulafia's thought, 22 substitutes ben Azzai for R. Akiva as the one who died by
the kiss. The statement survives in a unique manuscript, Ms. Vatican 441: "Ben
Azzai likewise desired the secret and went beyond the bounds to seek it, and he
died by the kiss." 2 ' Such a substitution is attested later in Abulafia's school. In
R, Yehudah Albotini's sixteenth-century Sullam ha-'AHyah we find the following
description of the moment of pronouncing the divine name:
Without doubt, at the moment when he departs from the realm of the human
and enters into the realm of the divine, his soul becomes separated [from
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matter] and refined, cleaving to the root of the source from which it was
hewn. And it happens that one's soul becomes entirely separated at that
moment of separation, and he remains dead. Such a death is the most
elevated one, as it is close to death by the divine kiss, and it was in this man-
ner that the soul of ben Azzai, who "gazed and died," left this world, for his
soul rejoiced when it saw the source whence it was hewn, and it wished to
cling to it and to remain there and not to return to the body. Of his death it is
said: "Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his pious ones" [Psalms
116:15]. Some of the masters of Wisdom and those who have engaged in
such acts have said that one who does not wish his soul to separate itself
from him during that vision ought to make his soul swear an oath, by a curse
or by the Great and Awesome Name, prior to the act but while still in his
own domain and in his human condition, so that at the time of the vision
and the appearance, when he is no longer under his own volition, his soul
shall not separate itself and cling to its source, but return to its container. 24
Here again the impact of Neoplatonic views is visible in a classic of ecstatic
Kabbalah. The soul is preexistent, "hewn from the source," and mystical death is
tantamount to the return to the source. This is the reason for the double aspect
of ecstasy — the fullness of human experience, on the one hand, and death, on
the other.
Such a complex attitude reappears elsewhere in the writings of Abulafia's
disciples. In a passage preserved in two manuscripts containing material from
ecstatic Kabbalah we read: "And he explained [the verse] 'by the mouth of
God' 25 as follows: this is compared to the kiss, and it [refers to] the cleaving of the
intellect to the object of its intellection so closely and intensely that there is no
longer any possibility for the soul [to remain in] matter, and that intense love
called the kiss is a rebuke to the body, and it remains alone, and this is the truth.
And on the literal level, [it means that] there was none of the weakness of the
elements or any element of chance but the edict of God, may He be blessed." 26
One of Abulafia's disciples, the anonymous author of Sejer ha-Malmad,
designates those who receive the true Torah as "the seekers of the kiss" (mevaqshei
ha-neshiqah) . He conceives the kiss as one of the greatest secrets of the Torah, an
emphatic description that points to the ecstatic understanding of religion as
dealing not only with the revelation in hoary antiquity, but also as an ideal that may
be achieved in the present by a small elite:
Indeed Moses received the Torah at Sinai and gave it over to those who
sought the kiss, and this is a great secret; there is no discussion in the entire
Torah that arouses the soul to its initial thought like this. And this is the
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secret of the seekers of the kiss — that they may be cleansed of the punish-
ment of Mount Sinai and receive the known cause on Mount Gerizim, upon
which dwells the created light, which is holy to God; and the entire law
hangs upon it, and also all deeds and the Tabernacle, and upon it revolve the
heavens, which the entire people accepted and [nevertheless] did not accept
[the law] upon themselves — that place which is the sanctuary of the soul
with the intellect. 27
The mountain is a metaphor for the place where the divine effluvia, namely the
intellectual stream that permeates reality, dwell, namely the head of man. This
theme recurs quite frequently in ecstatic Kabbalah. 28
Another anonymous disciple of Abulafia, the author of Sefer Ner 'Elohim, writes:
"He ordered us to hold our tongues against excessive speech concerning them
[the sefirot] and to place a check on our thoughts and balances in our desire for
the love of God, lest the soul become separated from the body in its great desire,
and seek the kisses of the lips of He who pours forth wisdom and love." 29
Last but not least; in an anonymous Commentary on the Pentateuch that is close to
Abulafia's Kabbalah we find again the preoccupation with the kiss of death:
The mundane Temple corresponds to the supernal Temple, namely when
man actualizes his intellect so as to cleave to God, then he is corresponding
to the supernal temple, because there is no material things, but intellectual
things, which encounter no hindrance. So too is man: then because of that
affection he will die, as it is written: "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his
mouth" [Song of Songs 1:2], namely there are three kisses, because three
persons died by the kiss, Moses and Aharon and Miriam. . . . You should
know that when two lovers meet after they have not seen each other for a
long time, they kiss each other so [ardently] that it seems that their soul will
almost depart, so are [these three affected], because out of desire their soul
exits and cleaves on high, and this is why the kiss is by mouth, because one's
vapor emerges and the other's too, and they become one spirit out of love. 30
As we saw in chapter 8, Recanati played a role in transmitting the Geronese
views on death by the kiss — together with similar themes in the Zohar — to other
Kabbalists, including a Spanish one, R Yehudah Hayyat. As for the ecstatic
Kabbalists, their treatments of death by the kiss influenced fifteenth-century
Byzantine Kabbalah and R. Yehudah Albotini in Jerusalem in the early sixteenth
century. Their discussions, permeated by philosophical themes, seem to have
enabled ecstatic mysticism to flourish in kabbalistic venues less concerned with
theosophical myths.
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3. Immanentist Theology
Abulafia's strong emphasis on the possibility of cleaving to the divine intellect
presupposes an immanent divinity, understood as an intellectual being, within the
mundane world. Immanentist visions of the ten sefirot are described by some of
Abulafia's followers, and the occurrence of the two topics in the same circle may
point to an affinity between them. So, for example, the author of Sejer Ner 'Elohim
writes:
there is a war within the heart of man, which is generated by the first
sefirah, 31 which is, in man, the good and the bad thought; and by the root,
the branch, and the leaves the fruits will be born; and so, likewise, will
happen to its [the first sefirah's] emanation 32 for good and for bad, namely
the thinker will become wise, to act by means of wisdom 33 in whatever he
does, good or bad, and likewise [in the case of] the understanding and
knowledge of good and bad, that he may understand good and bad and
discern between them . . . and the sefirot emanate the influx upon the heart,
and this influx is differentiated according to different sorts, some of them
natural, others accidental, other necessary, some of them voluntary . . . and
God wishes the heart, 34 which means that the Merciful wishes the merciful
heart, which pursues His attributes, as it is said: "just as He is merciful, so
also you shall be merciful," and so also all the other attributes. 35
The emanation involves the presence of divine powers not only in the mundane
world in general, but also specifically within the hearts of humankind. According
to the thirteenth-century Kabbalist R, Isaac ibn Latif, the verbs hayah (was), houeh
(is), and ue-yihyeh (will be) are present in the Tetragrammaton, and "they depict
the structure of the world and its existence and its size and its ten sefirot." 36 Later
in the same work Ibn Latif affirms that "the ten sefirot . . . are the size of the
world" and that "the ten sefirot comprise the ten degrees which are the constitu-
tion of the world and its form and its size." 37 According to an anonymous
commentary on the ten sefirot, titled Sejer Sitrei Torah, which has some conceptual
affinities to Abulafia's commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed, "the universal
powers that are [immanent] in the entire reality are the ten sefirot." 38 This com-
mentary, apparently written under the influence of ecstatic Kabbalah, should be
compared with another Abulafian work, the anonymous Sefer Ner 'Elohim, which
presents a rather pantheistic theory, combined with an immanentist perception of
the sefirot: "God is in the entire world and within the world and outside the world
in an infinite mode, and He rules the whole [world] , and in Him is it maintained. " 39
This immanent divinity is to be understood as the result of the identity between the
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emanations, or sefirot, and their source: "God is [identical with] them, and they
are He, but God emanated their forces on the created things and put them
within." 40 As against the theosophical speculations on the preexistence of the
"roots" of the sefirot, and other views dealing with higher sefirot, or Tzahtzahot,
characteristic of some kabbalistic schools in Spain, 41 this Kabbalist explicitly
states: "His attributes are influxes and emanations and spiritual entities that arose
with the creation of the world, and they emerged. That is to say, not that they were
qualities inherent in Him in potentia and [then] passed in actu when the world
appeared in actu; but He Himself emanated them with the world, since they are
things necessary for the world. . . .And they are ten attributes, and they are divided
in space, time, and soul." 42
I would like to emphasize the significance of the pantheistic formulations
accompanying the concept of sefirot qua immanent powers. In both Ibn Latif and
ecstatic Kabbalah, the formula "He is in all, and all is in Him" recurs several times;
in Ibn Latif, it occurs in relation to the divine will, 43 while in Abulafia, 44 in early
Gikatilla, 45 and in the author of Sefer Ner 'Elohim, 46 it refers to God Himself. 47
4. R. Reuven Tzarfati
We have seen above that issues peculiar to Abulafia's thought were transmitted in
kabbalistic writings by his immediate followers. These issues rarely surface outside
the sphere of ecstatic Kabbalah. Now it is time to consider a wider and more
complex effect of Abulafia's thought, one that resists categorization in one specific
school. One of the most important among the minor Kabbalists between the period
of Menahem Recanati, in the early fourteenth century, and Yohanan Alemanno, at
the end of the fifteenth, is a rather neglected author, R Reuven Tzarfati. This
Kabbalist's literary legacy has been identified in a pioneering study by Efraim
Gottlieb, who established his authorship of an anonymous commentary on Sefer
Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut. 48 Tzarfati, who probably flourished in the mid-fourteenth
century, was one of the first Kabbalists to synthesize ecstatic and theosophical
Kabbalah in Italy, and, as mentioned earlier, his commentary was widely available in
manuscripts and print and was translated into Latin by Flavius Mithridates. 49 Many
ofTzarfati's other kabbalistic treatises, found only in manuscript, are enigmatic, and
their content still remains to be studied in depth. 50 Gottlieb has shown that Tzarfati
wrote two other commentaries on kabbalistic treatises (presumably written by other
Kabbalists), known as The Small Parchment and The Great Parchment; 51 a Commentary on
the Ten Sefirot; 52 and a short untitled kabbalistic treatise. 53 Most of the codexes
containing these treatises were copied in Italy and are preserved in Italian libraries.
Tzarfati's Kabbalah is eclectic, and I cannot do justice to its complexity here.
But it is clear that he accepted Abulafia's theory about combination of letters, his
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philosophical epistemology, and, to a certain extent, his metaphysics, which was
indebted to the vision of the sefirot as the essence of God as formulated in Sefer
Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut. 54 The role of this book in the history of Kabbalah in Italy
merits independent analysis, which I cannot undertake here, but it should be
mentioned that a commentary upon this book by a descendant of R. Menahem
Recanati, R. Yitzhaq Elijah Finzi, survives in several manuscripts. 55 Sefer Ma'arekhet
ha-'Elohut represents the most systematic presentation of Nahmanides' thought,
yet it largely abandons Nahmanides' esotericism. Though presumably composed
in Catalonia, the book left few traces in Spanish Kabbalah but was very influential
in Italy. Tzarfati's interpretation of this treatise according to Abulafia's Kabbalah
thus constitutes a synthesis between a major book of Spanish Kabbalah, Sefer
Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut, namely the original interpreted text, and ecstatic Kabbalah,
which supplied some of the hermeneutical grid. Indeed, his book displays some of
the most representative features of ecstatic Kabbalah. Among the numerous
ecstatic elements there, let us focus on a specific congruence between one of his
texts and a discussion of Abulafia's. The latter wrote in his Commentary on Sefer
Yetzirah:
And it is stated in the Ha^adah: "[The angel] Gabriel 56 came and taught him
the seventy languages in one night." 57 And if you believe that [what was
taught was] the actual languages, [then] you make a foolish error. Rather,
this is Gabriel, regarding whom it was written: "Then I heard a holy one
speak" [Daniel 8:13], that is, he was speaking in the holy tongue. ... In
actuality, he taught him the order of all languages, derived from the Sefer
Yetzirah by very subtle means ... so that he will recognize the order that
reveals the ways of all languages, however many there may be. And it is not
meant that there are necessarily only seventy languages or [even] thousands
of them. 58
The meaning of this passage becomes clearer if we compare it with the words
of R. Reuven Tzarfati, who was well versed in Abulafia's doctrines. In his
Commentary on Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut he writes: "Know that the epitome of
human perfection is that one knows the secret of the Angel of the Countenance by
means of letter combination. Then he will know the seventy languages. Do not
think that they are, literally, languages, for if you believe this, you foolishly believe
in error. Indeed, the true faith is that you attain the perception of the Angel of the
Countenance, whose name is identical with the Name of his Master." 59 This
passage constitutes an excellent presentation of Abulafia's mystical ideal. Both the
revelation of an angel, which is a metaphor for the Agent Intellect, and the linguis-
tic technique used in order to attain it reflect the gist of ecstatic Kabbalah. Tzarfati
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fills in a detail that, to my best knowledge, is missing from Abulafia's Commentary
on Sefer Yetzirah or any other of his extant writings. According to the passage above,
it is possible to attain to the knowledge of the seventy languages, and by their
means to the epitome of wisdom, 60 which is the adherence to or union with the
Agent Intellect, or, in the ordinary imagery of Jewish tradition, the perception of
the "Angel of the Countenance," or "Gabriel," all this by means of letter combi-
nation. I would like to emphasize that the passages above do not reflect the dis-
closure of an esoteric topic that had been kept secret and revealed earlier, but
rather the preservation of a passage that is simply missing in the extant works of
Abraham Abulafia.
Important for an understanding of the intellectual ambiance that is character-
istic of the Abulafian school is the remark about the simple-mindedness of the
believers in the plain sense of the rabbinic mythologems. This skeptical perspec-
tive is conspicuous in the last two quotations, and we shall see it below in
chapter 20 in a passage from Sefer Ner 'Elohim concerning belief in the creation of
the Golem. Such an attitude is also expressed by Abulafia in one of his discussions
dealing with the experience of infants, speculating whether an untutored baby will
speak Hebrew. In contrast to his more sympathetic master, the philosopher
R. Hillel of Verona, Abulafia despises such simple-minded belief. 61 Thus both
Abulafia and his followers in Italy displayed a rather skeptical attitude, more simi-
lar to the philosophical critical attitude than to the more fideistic approaches char-
acteristic of the Ashkenazi Pietists or of the Spanish Kabbalists. The reverberation
of Abulafia's attitude in Italy is therefore adding a special color to the Kabbalah in
the peninsula.
5. The Anonymous Sefer Toledot 'Adam
Tzarfati was not the only Kabbalist in Italy whose writings reverberated with
Abulafia's views. In 1444 an unknown author wrote a treatise titled Sefer Toledot
'Adam, which survives in a unique and largely neglected codex at Oxford's Bodleian
Library, although there are several reasons to believe that the work was composed
in Italy. The work presents strong philosophical interpretations of some rabbinic
legends. Although its kabbalistic valence is not conspicuous, some of its views
anticipate later developments in Kabbalah in Italy. In a few instances, its rather
extreme Maimonidean allegorical interpretations of the scriptures are coupled
with astromagical interpretations, influenced explicitly by R Abraham ibn Ezra's
views. 62 So, for example, we read: "On Jericho the influx of Saturn is found, which
is the seventh of the planets, and this is the reason they circumambulated it seven
times and the wall fell on the day of Sabbath, which is Saturn's day, and there was
destruction, because the nature of Saturn is to emanate destruction." 63 Here, the
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magical ritual of the Israelites is not performed during the Sabbath, but its reper-
cussions are intended to occur then, all this in the context of the influx of Saturn.
This astromagical orientation is combined with elements stemming from
Abraham Abulafia and Ibn Latif. The following passage demonstrates Abulafia's
impact:
If you wish to learn before a great master, who is the angel of prophecy,
whose name is Raziel, and if you understand all that I have hinted of his
power and his teaching, then you will know the secret of his name. And if
you wish to be one of his disciples and to learn in his book, which is that of
the completely righteous, and you wish to be inscribed with them immedi-
ately for eternity, then take care to study continually from [the age of]
thirteen years until [the age of] forty years 64 in the book of the intermediate
ones in front of the good angel Gallizur, who is the intellective master; and
from forty years onward let your principal study be before Raziel, and then
secrets of wisdom shall be revealed to you, for you shall already be a great
man among the giants. 65
Raziel is both the name of an angel that discloses secrets, in late-antique Jewish
sources, and one of the theophoric names that Abulafia adopted for himself in
order to point to his attainment to a certain spiritual level. The following passage
from the introduction to Abulafia's prophetic books bears a certain resemblance
to Toledot 'Adam: "I, Abubrahim the young, studied before Raziel my master for
thirteen years, and while I was yet thirteen years old I was unable to understand a
thing from his books." 66 Despite the differences between the two passages, both
portray Raziel as a master, and the two works complement each other in their
discussions of the appropriate periods of study: Toledot 'Adam deals with periods of
study from ages thirteen to forty and from age forty on, while Abulafia's introduc-
tion speaks of the earliest period, lasting until the age of thirteen. Why the anony-
mous author failed to mention his hypothetical source in ecstatic Kabbalah, now
presumably lost, is a question that I cannot answer.
This is not just a single case in the anonymous Toledot 'Adam of copying
without attribution from the works of other authors. Already in the introduction,
the author copies in succession from three different works of Ibn Latif without
mentioning the sources:
[i] This gate will be closed and not opened, and no unclean man will enter
therein, but the God of Israel will come by it, and it will remain closed. 67
[2] The speech of the man, who writes in his hand to God, for I have dared
to speak and I am dust and ashes, and do not know any book. 68 [3] And
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because I have chosen eternal life, my soul has longed and yearned, and goes
from a temporary dwelling to a permanent dwelling, which is Hebron, Kiryat
Arba, and ascends to the city of heroes, which is the city of the great king. 69
The first two statements copy Ibn Latif verbatim; the third varies from the
original only slightly. Even the title of the book, Toledot 'Adam, may also have been
influenced by a lost work with the same title by Ibn Latif, although there can be
no doubt that our treatise is not his. 70 Italy's status as an independent center of
learning is surely confirmed by the fact that the writings of the Spanish Kabbalist
Ibn Latif left almost no traces in Spain but were clearly well known in Italy, where
manuscripts of his works have been preserved. 71
The topic of prophecy recurs several times in Toledot Adam, and in some
instances we may understand the author as pointing not to ancient experiences
but to a more contemporary one. 72 Like Abulafia, this author introduces the tech-
nique of combining letters in the context of an exegesis of Maimonides' Guide of the
Perplexed. 73 This special brand of combination will recur also in Yohanan Alemanno
in Florence.
6. Reverberations
In its combination of astromagical themes with material stemming from Ibn Latif
and Abulafia, Toledot Adam resembles two lists of kabbalistic works compiled in
Italy toward the end of the fifteenth century. One was a list of works regarded by
R Yehudah Hayyat as "pernicious" and thus to be avoided; the other was a list of
works that Yohanan Alemanno recommended for study. There is some overlap in
their content. By their very existence, both lists attest to the presence of a certain
tradition among Italian Jewish Kabbalists, and the discussions above support the
possibility of a proclivity among them toward philosophy, magic, and ecstatic
Kabbalah.
In addition to this internal congruence among some books written in the vein
of ecstatic Kabbalah, we should take note of the importance of the writings of a
contemporary of Abulafia, the Spanish Kabbalist Isaac ibn Latif, which we have
already seen played a significant role in Italy. Like Abulafia, Ibn Latif displayed
little interest in either theosophy or theurgy, and cultivated a blend of Kabbalah,
with a focus on the divine names, and philosophy. Indeed, his most important
treatise, Sha'ar ha-Shamayyim, opens with the statement: "This book links the
science of Kabbalah with the science of philosophy." 74 Thus it is not surprising
that he, like Abulafia, played only a very marginal role in the intellectual history of
Jewish thought in Spain. In contrast, it was from Ibn Latif 's Sha'ar ha-Shamayyim
that Pico drew an interesting passage in his Heptaplus. 75
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Ecstatic Kabbalah
It seems clear that by the middle of the fifteenth century Italy was the site
of trends of thought that embraced various combinations of ecstatic Kabbalah,
philosophical Kabbalah, and astromagic. Thus, the marriage between magic and
Kabbalah, as Dame Frances Yates formulated the distinctive contribution of
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, had antecedents in Italy among the Jews some
decades earlier, as well as in Yohanan Alemanno, as we shall see in chapter 14. 76
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12
THE KABBALISTIC-PHILOSOPHICAL-
MAGICAL EXCHANGES IN ITALY
i. Italy as a Median Place in Jewish Culture
Italy is one of the sites where the tensions between Kabbalah and another form of
Jewish thought, philosophy, are visible quite early. It is also one of the places
where the syntheses between the two are numerous and conspicuous. The chief
reason for these phenomena is the geographical location of Italy, between Western
Jewish communities in North Africa, Spain, France, and Germany, and the Eastern
communities, mainly in Babylonia, Egypt, and Palestine. The Italian peninsula
was a place where many trajectories intersected, as indeed was Sicily. So, for
example, Italian and Ashkenazi traditions mention the arrival in Italy of Abu
Aharon ben Shmuel from Baghdad, bringing with him esoteric traditions that
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were subsequently adopted by the Ashkenazi Pietists. According to a tradition pre-
served in a writing of R. Eleazar of Worms, one of the most important thirteenth-
century masters of these Hasidim, the secrets that he preserved derived from hoary
antiquity — actually from the time of the Second Temple — and were transmitted
from the land of Israel to Babylonia, thence to Italy via Abu Aharon of Baghdad,
and thereafter through the migration of the Qalonymos family from Italy to the
Ashkenazi territories:
they received the esoteric traditions about the arrangement of the prayers, as
well as the other esoteric traditions, rabbi from rabbi, all the way back to
Abu Aharon, the son of Samuel the prince, who left Babylonia because of
a certain incident and was therefore required to travel all over the world [as
a penance] . He came to the land of Lombardy, to a certain city called Lucca.
There he found our Rabbi Moses . . . and he transmitted to him all his
esoteric traditions. This is Rabbi Moses ben Qalonymos, son of Meshullam
bar Rabbi Qalonymos bar Yehudah. He was the first who emigrated from
Lombardy, he and his sons, Rabbi Qalonymos and Rabbi Yequtiel, and
his kinsman Rabbi Itiel . . . Rabbi Qalonymos the Elder transmitted [the
esoteric traditions] — as we have written — to Eleazar Hazan of Speyer. Rabbi
Eleazar Hazan transmitted them to Rabbi Samuel the Pietist [he-Hasid] , and
Rabbi Samuel the Pietist transmitted them to Rabbi Yehudah he-Hasid
[the Pietist]. And from him did I, the insignificant one, receive the esoteric
traditions about the prayers, as well as other traditions. 1
This passage is the most detailed and most historically oriented testimony
about the arrival of Jewish mysticism in Europe. Although we may safely assume
that some esoteric ideas and perhaps also books were already known in the eighth
century in France, 2 nothing like such a detailed genealogy concerning the
transmission of Jewish mysticism is available in any other document.
Whether some historical core exists beneath the trappings of this legend is still
a matter of debate among scholars. 3 Although it is difficult to establish a firm his-
torical basis for most of the details of this genealogy of secrets, it may well be that
the general lines of a migration of knowledge from East to West are correct. The
Ashkenazi masters elaborated upon the traditions they received, incorporating
philosophical concepts stemming from the writings of R. Sa'adyah Gaon. It can
be assumed that from the Ashkenazi centers the views of the Heikhalot literature
and some of their own esoteric views reached Spain, where they had a smaller
impact than in Germany and France.
An abundant long-distance transmission of knowledge is certainly well attested.
R. Sabbatai Donnolo wandered to the East before composing his writings. R. Nathan
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Kabbalistic-Philosophical-Magical Exchanges
ben Yehi'el of Rome, the author of the famous rabbinic dictionary Sefer ha-'Arukh, was
well acquainted with Eastern Jewish sources. R. Jacob Anatoli came to Italy from
Provence, bringing with him the Provencal Maimonidean tradition. Later in the
thirteenth century another Jewish philosopher, R Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen of
Barcelona, was active in Rome, as we shall see later in this chapter. And as we saw in
chapter 7, Abraham Abulafia brought to Italy a variety of kabbalistic writings, and
many more arrived immediately afterward and were used by Recanati in his writings.
According to some evidence, which needs detailed investigation, the arrival of
R Yohanan Alemanno's family in Italy from Aragon in the 1430s was instrumental
in bringing some speculative literature from Spain. As we shall see below, both
immediately before and after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Kabbalists
arrived in Italy from the Iberian peninsula. This flux of traditions would increase
from Palestine and the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, but that history lies beyond the temporal parameters of this book.
However, Italy was much more than a site of encounters for the various Jewish
intellectual traditions. 4 The spiritual effervescence of the peninsula, and especially
of Rome, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance invited interactions between
Jewish and Christian thinkers that were rare outside Italy. We know about contacts
between Jacob Anatoli and Michael Scotus in the first half of the thirteenth
century. Studies by Giuseppe Sermoneta have made it clear that R Hillel of Verona,
R Yehudah Romano, and Immanuel of Rome absorbed significant aspects of
Scholastic literature originally written in Latin. 5 Although his observation seems
to have had no effect on later authors, R Yehudah Romano was the first to men-
tion explicitly the affinity between Platonic themes and the sefirot. 6 As Shlomo
Pines has pointed out, it was much easier for Jewish authors in Italy to acknowl-
edge Christian influence there than it was for their counterparts in Spain. 7 Indeed,
during the Renaissance the boundaries between Jewish and Christian thought
became quite porous. As a result, syntheses between Kabbalah and non-Jewish
philosophies influenced subsequent kabbalistic literature more in Italy than else-
where. Although R. Joseph ibn Waqar offered a complex synthesis between
Kabbalah and philosophy in Castile that had some reverberations in Spain toward
the end of the century, 8 and in Italy toward the end of the fifteenth century, 9
Spanish Kabbalah largely neglected Abulafia's ecstatic Kabbalah and was only
marginally affected by Recanati's version of theosophy.
2. R. Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen's Critiques of
Commentaries on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed
The arrival in Italy, sometime in the 1230s, of a Maimonidean philosopher,
R. Jacob Anatoli, precipitated the first sharp critique of one of the most esoteric
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traditional topics in Judaism, the Account of the Divine Chariot, Ma'aseh Merlcauah.
The Provencal philosopher dismissed those who regarded the Account of the
Chariot as "meaningless names" as "children without hearts." 10 It is hard to estab-
lish whether Anatoli' s targets were Provengal or Italian Jews. However, it was in
Italy (and Sicily) that Abulafia later interpreted the Ma'aseh Merlcauah as consisting
of the letters of the divine names."
The arrival of another philosopher in the 1270s, this time from Barcelona,
provoked a similar polemic. In a letter to R. Hillel of Verona, following up on a
brutal attack concerning the latter's "misunderstandings" of the Guide of the
Perplexed, R. Zerahyah Hen enumerated three of the most important works dealing
with esoteric topics, and claimed that in Maimonides' book
there are no secrets or enigmas from the category of the gematria or of
the combination of letters, nor from the category of the names, the talis-
mans [tzurot], and the amulets, used by the Masters of the Names [Ba'alei
ha-Shemot], writers of the amulets, nor of the multiplicity of angels or any-
thing mentioned in Sefer Yetzirah or Sefer Raziel or Sefer Shi'ur Qomah. Everything
that the Gaon, our rabbi, blessed be the memory of this righteous, has
mentioned from the words of the sages, blessed be their memory, small and
great, concerning an issue related to prophecy, or dealing with the Merlcauah
or the account of the Creation, [which are] written in the Torah, all are from
the category I have mentioned [namely things related to natural topics] or
are related to their intention. And if someone has some secrets or enigmas
or allusions or parables that are not from the category I have mentioned to
you, they are all vain and worthless things. 12
The term tzurot, translated above as "talismans," is found in various medieval
magical treatises. 13 It stems from the Hermetic understanding of magic, which
entered Judaism slowly from the twelfth century on, a phenomenon that will be
discussed later in this book. The other term, Ba'alei ha-Shemot, apparently refers to
an indigenous Jewish form of magic, and Abulafia mentions it in an explicitly
negative context. 14 This passage is part of a confrontation between universalist and
particularist trends in Judaism. Maimonides, one of the major figures in the inte-
gration into Judaism of the naturalistic thought espoused in some Greek and
Arabic philosophies, provoked both a rejection of his naturalization of religion
and, as in the case of Abulafia and his possible sources, an attempt to interpret him
in a more particularist way, by resorting to linguistic topics specific to Judaism,
as we shall see later. Nature, which is one of Maimonides' main concerns, was
largely supplanted by language, which the Kabbalists regarded as superior, either
as a more powerful instrument of action, namely magic, or as an instrument to
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Kabbalistic-Philosophical-Magical Exchanges
accelerate the intellectual process to produce ecstasy. R. Zerahyah embodies an
intellectual response to these two mystical-magical reactions to Maimonides: he
sharply criticizes both Nahmanides' attempt to offer a non-Aristotelian picture of
the world 15 and the attempts of ecstatic Kabbalists to infuse magical and mystical
elements into the secrets of the Guide. The nonnaturalistic interpretations of the
secrets of the Guide include at least two distinct categories. One deals with gematria
and combinations of letters, two exegetical methods that mesh with Abulafia's
approach to the Guide. The other category, dealing with divine names, talismanic
figures, and amulets, seems to refer to writings different from those of Abulafia,
who opposed magic, including linguistic magic. 16 No positive attitude to magic or
a recommendation to use talismans and amulets can found in any of Abulafia's
surviving writings, including his commentaries on the Guide.
These two categories — the ecstatic-combinatory and the magical-talismanic —
are not only plausible models of thought and praxis in themselves but are also
corroborated by the syntax of R. Zerahyah's formulation of his critique. The
importance of this distinction is even greater given the survival of a short literary
work attributing an interest in magic and astrology and in divine names to
Maimonides. In a spurious epistle ascribed to Maimonides, titled Megillat Setarim,
magical names, talismanic magic, and angels are mentioned as if they were found
in the Guide of the Perplexed. 17 This spurious epistle is not dated, and the passage
from R. Zerahyah quoted above provides a plausible terminus ante quern for the
emergence of some of the ideas included in it. Although this work is quite close to
Abulafia's thought, I see no reason to attribute it to Abulafia himself, and the
possibility that it was criticized by R Zerahyah helps us to date it to the preceding
generation, in the circle of Abulafia's teacher, apparently in Barcelona, or, what
seems to me less plausible, to the time of his followers, later in Italy. 18 It is worth
noting that in a manner quite reminiscent of R Zerahyah's text pointing to two
different groups, Mecjillat Setarim mentions three types of Kabbalah, the first being
prophetic Kabbalah and the third "practical Kabbalah." 19 1 see these categories as
corresponding to the combinatory technique and the talismanic praxis respec-
tively in Zerahyah's critique of the misunderstandings of the Guide. Certainly the
content of the quotation from R Zerahyah's epistle implies that Abulafia was not
the only person in Italy who embraced a mystical approach to the Guide, although
he may have been one of the sources for such a reading there.
This distinction between the two forms of misinterpretation seems to occur
again in another possible reference to mystical reading of the Guide. Aviezer
Ravitzky has pointed out that in Zerahyah's own Commentary on the Guide, he men-
tions "many persons whose minds are polluted by erroneous opinions" in connec-
tion with discussions about the interpretation of the term ben, son, as hinting at
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Kabbalistic-Philosophical-Magical Exchanges
divine names. 20 The affinity between this passage and Abulafia's similar interpre-
tation of the term ben is clear. However, the fact that R. Zerahyah mentions "many
persons" opens up the possibility that Abulafia was not alone in his eccentric read-
ing of the Guide. Whether the other persons who espoused such a reading were
students of Abulafia or earlier authors who had inspired his vision of the Guide, as
he himself claims in the quotation above, is a question that cannot be answered
definitively on the basis of the extant material. However, even if such a definitive
answer is not within our reach on the basis of the extant material, I am inclined to
opt for the latter alternative, for the following two reasons:
[a] R. Zerahyah's critiques are relatively early, written during the lifetime
of Abulafia, and I wonder if we can document the repercussions of his
interpretations among his students in Capua, the town where he started
to study the Guide. On the other hand, Abulafia expressly indicates that
the secrets he is revealing have been received from several persons.
Thus, although we cannot rule out the dissemination of Abulafian inter-
pretations among some younger persons in Italy, to whom Zerahyah
reacted, it seems more plausible to allow for the impact of the thoughts,
and maybe even writings, that served as the sources for Abulafia him-
self, on the texts criticized by Zerahyah.
[b] The talismanic reading of the Guide implied in Zerahyah's use of the
term tzurah corresponds to the spurious epistle mentioned above, where
the term ruhaniyyut, which here means astral spiritualities, crucial in
talismanic magic, occurs. 21 Moreover, in some ecstatic kabbalistic texts
written after the death of Abulafia, such as some of the writings of
R Yitzhaq of Acre, the term ruhaniyyut recurs time and again. In any
case, although I am not aware of a mystical-magical interpretation of
the Guide in Spain, the existence of such a reading before the time of
Abulafia seems plausible, for reasons that I have offered elsewhere. 22
Let me return to the three esoteric books mentioned above in Zerahyah's
critique. He claims that their content does not share any significant content with
Maimonides' Guide. Philologically speaking, Zerahyah is certainly correct.
Abulafia, notwithstanding his profound Maimonidean tendencies, based his
system on Sefer Yetzirah, and his understanding of Maimonides' book relies on
intensive use of combinations of letters to discover the secrets of the Torah. 2 '
Thus, it seems that Zerahyah had a good reason to deny the relevance of this
approach for the contents of the Guide. However, whereas Maimonides did not
even mention the Sefer Yetzirah, in my opinion deliberately, he strenuously attacked
Sefer Shi'ur Qomah, the most anthropomorphic work in the Heikhalot literature. In
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contrast, Abulafia and his student Joseph Gikatilla interpreted the anthropomor-
phic descriptions contained in Shi'ur Qomah from a philosophical standpoint,
as if the late-antique book dealt with a macrocosmic vision and not with a
theological concept: the huge sizes of the divinity. 24 Thus, again, a view that
attracted Zerahyah's critique has something in common with a certain approach
related to the Guide and found in Abulafia. Even in the case of Sefer Razicl a connec-
tion with Abulafia seems discernible. This magical-mystical book, found in a
variety of versions, incorporated material stemming from Heikhalot literature. 25
In Sheva' Netivot ha-Torah, written in Italy, Abulafia mentions this work twice; 26 and,
as we shall see later, other versions of Sefer Raziel were available to and quoted by
Yohanan Alemanno at the end of the thirteenth century. 27 The very title of the book
offers another potential connection with Abulafia, who, as we saw earlier, adopted
the name Raziel for himself. In short, only in Italy do we find mystical-magical
interpretations of the Guide of the Perplexed, and their critiques. Neither of these
were attested in Spain in such an explicit manner.
3. The Critiques of Kabbalah in Italy
A comparison of the writings of Jewish authors active at the end of the fifteenth
century and the beginning of the sixteenth with the works composed by their
immediate predecessors reveals a deep change in the attitude to Kabbalah over the
two generations. The earlier authors, R. Moshe ben Yoav (Datillo), Moshe Rieti,
R. Elijah del Medigo, and R. Yehudah Messer Leon, were much more conservative,
closer to medieval Jewish philosophy, and unaware or suspicious of both magic
and Kabbalah. 28 R. Elijah del Medigo's deep commitment to the ideas of Aristotle
and Averroes undoubtedly lay behind his sharp critiques of Kabbalah in his Sefer
Behinat ha-Dat. 20 1 remain unconvinced by Kalman P. Bland's ambitious and inter-
esting recent attempt, on the basis of all the extant passages referring to Kabbalah
in the writings of del Medigo, to portray an evolution in the latter's attitude to
Kabbalah. 30 Whereas Alemanno later praises most of the Kabbalists for their inter-
pretation of the status of the sefirot, del Medigo condemns them on the same
basis, 31 by subtly pointing out the resemblances between this mystical lore and
Neoplatonism — a disparaging comparison for an Aristotelian thinker. Del
Medigo's more explicit statements about Kabbalah are aimed at showing that,
contrary to the views of the Kabbalists, the Zohar is not an ancient book, but a
thirteenth-century text, 32 and that the theurgical approach to the commandments,
a crucial topic of most kabbalistic thought and praxis, is idolatrous. He does not
even mention the more philosophical approaches of Kabbalists, such as those of
Abraham Abulafia, known by many in Italy. In contrast, though using Aristotelian
and Averroistic concepts, both Alemanno and his younger contemporary R. David
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Kabbalistic-Philosophical-Magical Exchanges
Messer Leon interpret crucial kabbalistic topics philosophically. David Messer
Leon uses Aristotelian categories, some of them adopted from Thomist texts, to
describe the nature of the sefirot. 33 1 assume that del Medigo's attitude to Kabbalah
reflects both his experience in northern Italy, where he encountered Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola's Christian Kabbalah and Alemanno's magical one, and also a
negative attitude toward this lore in his motherland, Crete. 34
In Sefer Behinat ha-Dat, R. Elijah del Medigo opposes unnamed authors who view
the Torah and the commandments as a means to cause the descent of spiritual
forces: "It is impossible to bring spiritual forces into the world in this way as do
the magicians who employ forms and talismans. When we examine the words of
the Torah, we find that the Torah strenuously opposes this practice, for these are
idolatrous practices." 35 We may assume that these remarks are a criticism of
Yohanan Alemanno's views. Del Medigo was a member of Pico della Mirandola's
intellectual circle until about 1490, and it was there that he heard Alemanno's
views discussed. Del Medigo's best-known comment on the Kabbalists' views is
found in his Behinat ha-Dat, one of the first critiques of Kabbalah: "Most of them
agree with the statements of the early philosophers, the negligibility of whose
opinions is well understood by learned people. Whoever has seen the statements
of the Platonists and these [kabbalistic] statements will know that such is the
truth. I have already discussed this in another place and therefore I do not wish at
this time to discuss the matter." 36 Coming from a committed Aristotelian thinker
like del Medigo, his reference to "early philosophers" is clearly intended to dimin-
ish the status of the ideas with which the Kabbalists agree. His statement amounts
to saying that the Kabbalists adopted obsolete ways of thought, which are inferior
to the philosophic approaches accepted by himself. Del Medigo's mention of
Platonists in the plural form may indicate an acquaintance with Marsilio Ficino's
translations of Neoplatonic literature. In a remarkable passage in his commentary
on Averroes' De Substantia Orbis, he compares specific kabbalistic and Neoplatonic
themes:
These beings, which are called sefirot in accordance with their degree of
reality, act by virtue of the power of the tenth one, which they call 'Ein Sqf,
and by virtue of the emanation reaching the sefirot from It. Therefore every-
thing exists by virtue of the power of 'Ein Sqf, for the sefirot are emanated
from It and depend upon It. 37 Therefore, in their opinion the world order is
derived from them. These opinions were taken from the propositions of the
early philosophers, particularly from Plato. In their books, you will find
these matters discussed at length. They construct proofs for these ideas in
accordance with their own method. They say that one cannot ascribe any
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name to 'Ein Soj", but 'Ein So/may be apprehended by the intellect, as men-
tioned by Averroes in the Incoherence of the Incoherence. 38 This is known to one
who has seen the books of these Platonists and the propositions of the early
philosophers. In those books, you will also find statements concerning the
Shemittot, 39 the destruction of the world and its reconstruction, as well as the
transmigration of souls, so thatyou can find scarcely any difference between
these philosophers and these Kabbalists insofar as terms and allusions are
concerned. ... In conclusion, they are nearly identical in principles and
topics and in the matter of sacrifices. These statements are very far removed
from the words of the Peripatetics and their principles. 40
This comparison of Kabbalah and Platonism, though very general, is important
for an understanding of the way in which the Kabbalah was able to enter
Renaissance intellectual culture. The concurrence of the Kabbalah with certain
aspects of ancient philosophy (discussed in the next chapter) endowed it with the
aura of an ancient theology whose vestiges were eagerly sought by Renaissance
thinkers. The conceptual proximity of the Kabbalah and Pico's thought concern-
ing prisca theologia in particular enabled Kabbalah to become part of the efflores-
cence of Renaissance Platonism. The relationship of Platonism and Kabbalah
had no theoretical significance for Jewish philosophers of an Aristotelian bent.
Alemanno was interested in both Kabbalah and Platonism and tried to find points
common to both. Understandably, this search for agreement was not pursued in a
critical fashion; in some instances, there was no real connection between the
kabbalistic and Platonic concepts. Furthermore, there was a clear tendency to
superimpose Platonic or Neoplatonic formulations upon the Kabbalah.
Del Medigo's passage concerns a kabbalistic conception in which 'Ein Serf is
identical with the Supreme Crown, Keter, the first sefirah. The most important
exponent of this idea in the Spanish school was R. Joseph Gikatilla in his later
kabbalistic writings. Two Kabbalist contemporaries of del Medigo in Italy also
held this view: R Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of Genazzano, and the Spanish
Kabbalist R Yitzhaq ben Samuel Mor Hayyim, who lived in Naples for a short time
when del Medigo was writing his Behinat ha-Dat. 41 In this passage del Medigo
therefore demonstrates familiarity with the dispute over the problem of the iden-
tity of 'Ein So/ with the Supreme Crown and, by extension, a solid acquaintance
with theosophical Kabbalah. His rejection of the theurgical-magical aspects of
this lore and his entrenchment in medieval Neo-Aristotelianism produced an
antagonism not only to Kabbalah but also to the synthetic approach adopted by
Pico della Mirandola. The fact that del Medigo left Italy and returned to Crete is
surely an emblematic event, reflecting the strength of the new orientation in
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Florentine Renaissance circles, as well as the abiding hostility to this orientation
in the older, conservative Jewish elite.
I assume that the emergence and dissemination of Christian Kabbalah was an
incentive for the increasingly systematic criticism of the Jewish Kabbalah by Jewish
authors throughout the Renaissance, a trend that influenced del Medigo's project.
A letter from him to Pico, in which he discussed kabbalistic books, indicates that
he was responding to the nascent Christian Kabbalah. 42 We can find a more
direct connection in the other important critic of Kabbalah, Leone da Modena,
(Yehudah Arieh of Modena). For him, the fact that Christians accepted Kabbalah
was a major argument against its Jewish origin. With Modena's 'Ari Nohem we
enter a crucial phase in the Jewish criticism of Kabbalah, in which the need to
counteract Christian Kabbalah contributed to a better understanding of this lore
even among the Jews. The emergence in Italy of historical and philological cri-
tiques of Kabbalah, authored by persons who knew the Italian intellectual arena
very well, is also closely tied to new critical developments in the humanistic circles
in Italy, where there were widespread efforts to establish the authenticity and the
historical background of important writings, including some very revered ones. 43
Even traditional Jewish Kabbalists occasionally studied or at least were aware of
the content of Christian Kabbalah. 44 In some cases Christian ideas penetrated
their works. 45 Among these were R Mordekhai Dato, Abraham Yagel, Joseph
Hamitz, Jacob Hayyim Tzemah, Abraham Kohen Herrera, and perhaps even
Nathan of Gaza, the prophet of Sabbatai Tzevi.
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13
PRISCA THEOLOGIA
R. Isaac Abravanel, Leone Ebreo, and
R. Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano
i. Kabbalah and Prisca Theologia in Renaissance Thought
Just as the emergence of critiques of Kabbalah in Italy reflected the influence of
Italian humanism, with its more critical approach to texts, so we may assume that
the Italian Renaissance affected the attitude to Kabbalah among some Jews. And
indeed, as we saw in the previous chapter, the emergence of Christian Kabbalah,
with its missionary goals, prompted a more negative attitude toward Jewish
Kabbalah among several Jewish authors.
One topic central to the understanding of Kabbalah in this period, which preoc-
cupied many Renaissance scholars, was the concept of prisca theolcujia, the belief in
the existence of an "ancient theology" whose basic tenets manifested themselves in
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various religious and philosophical doctrines under different nomenclatures. 1
For example, Marsilio Ficino, one of the major exponents of this theory, named a
series of ancient thinkers and mythical figures, among them Zoroaster, Hermes,
Pythagoras, and Plato. 2 According to Ficino, the views of the ancient philosophers
were in accord with Moses' religious oudook, a fact that conferred religious author-
ity on their thinking. This attitude toward religious knowledge was adopted also by
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and became quite widespread in the Renaissance.
In this chapter I want to analyze several statements that reveal a concordance
between Jewish and other forms of traditions, and to discuss the significance of
that concordance. This discussion establishes the likelihood that Jews were
acquainted with Christian discussions stemming from Renaissance sources, inte-
grated them, and adapted them to their own purposes. Kabbalah as a lore claim-
ing a long pedigree could serve the Jews in counteracting Christian claims about
the antiquity of a variety of theologies and their congruence with Christian tenets.
Renaissance Italy was a major site of comparisons between some kabbalistic
stands and the views of ancient philosophers. Here I shall focus on two contempo-
rary figures, one a Spanish first-rank intellectual active in Italy, the other a more
minor figure of Italian extraction. As we shall see in the next chapter, additional
examples are abundant in Yohanan Alemanno's writings.
2. R. Isaac and Yehudah Abravanel's Views of Prisca Theologia
Among the most learned and famous thinkers who arrived in Italy after being
expelled from Spain was R Isaac ben Yehudah Abravanel (1437-1508). One of the
most important, influential, and recognized leaders of the Sephardi Jewry ever,
Abravanel lived his last fourteen years in Italy. A prolific writer, he produced a
comprehensive commentary on the Pentateuch, as well as several treatises dealing
with the calculation of the end and other messianic topics. Though profoundly
shaped by the Jewish Spanish culture, and a major representative of some of its
most important intellectual directions, Abravanel acculturated swiftly to Italian
intellectual life. In this limited framework, I cannot address the voluminous and
multifaceted literary activity of this giant of Jewish thought 3 or even the general
content of all the work he produced in Italy. Here we must restrict ourselves to
some of his writings that are relevant to the topic of ancient theology. 4 On this
topic as on some others, it emerges clearly that Isaac Abravanel's views on
Kabbalah were shaped by the Italian Renaissance culture that his own views
and that, more importantly, those of his son, Yehudah, known as Leone Ebreo,
contributed much to the larger culture, both Jewish and Christian.
As a philosopher, Abravanel had been nurtured on the medieval philosophical
traditions, 5 but he was also acquainted with kabbalistic doctrines. For Abravanel,
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as for some other fifteenth-century philosophers in Spain, such as R Hasdai
Crescas, R. Joseph Albo, and R. Abraham Shalom, Kabbalah was part, though a
modest one, of his broad culture, and the conservative bent of these Spanish
thinkers influenced him. In his early treatise Sefer 'Ateret Zeqenim, written while
he was still in Spain, Abravanel compares the kabbalistic vision of the sefirot
with Averroes' view of attributes, 6 a leitmotif that is found also in other Jewish
Renaissance sources. He seems also to have absorbed several topics widely treated
in Jewish and Christian Renaissance literature, such as magical 7 and Platonic
understandings of Judaism. He also quotes in his works from the Hermetic litera-
ture, recently translated by Marsilio Ficino. Thus in his treatise dealing with the
creation of the world, titled Mrf'alot 'Elohim, composed in 1498 in Italy, we read:
"According to the divine truth all human souls were created before bodies came
into existence at the genesis of creation, and this was the belief held by the greatest
philosophers in ancient times, such as Hermes Trismegistus, given the name
Hanoch, 8 and Pythagoras, Plato, and others. Yet indeed in the case of Aristotle we
have not found an interpretation of this sort." 9 Although the antecedence of the
soul is a common topic among authors of the Middle Ages, the direct reference to
Hermes Trismegistus clearly indicates the influence of the Hermetic corpus,
whose importance significantly increased during the last quarter of the fifteenth
century in northern Italy. However, in addition to the mention of the name Hermes
(here spelled Ermes, betraying an Italian pronunciation), the conceptual context in
which Abravanel places him is the accordance between the view of the Torah and
that of "the greatest philosophers in ancient times." The mention of Hermetic
literature together with Pythagoras and Plato reflects an ecumenical attitude
common in the circle of scholars to which Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola
belonged. Although Abravanel's words here do not reveal which of the various
Jewish spiritual trends he perceives as the "divine truth," they may imply a
kabbalistic approach to the essence of the soul. In his Yeshu'ot Meshiho, a messianic
treatise composed in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century, he wrote:
It was accepted by Abraham that a man without sons does not have a part in
the world to come, as indicated in the sayings of our rabbis of blessed mem-
ory. For this was also the belief among some of the ancient philosophers, 10
as written in the book The Eternity of the Soul and the Godhead, attributed to
the Egyptian Enoch, named Hermes Trismegistus. The explanation is that
the childless man does not have eternity of the soul, the reason being that
since, according to them, the soul is prior to the perfection of the body, they
have agreed that the perfect or deficient compound is drawn to the perfect or
deficient soul. Furthermore, there are souls who are barren by nature, as a
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consequence of a deficiency in the perfection and eternity of the soul.
Therefore, Man, carrying this soul, was childless and barren in the shape
and image of the noneternal, until sexual procreation and the bearing of
fruits came into existence. Indeed, the carrier of the perfect and eternal souls
will bear fruit, as is implied in the commandment of the Pentateuch
[Deuteronomy 20:19] that the tree of the field and the progenitor, the bearer
of fruit, shall not be destroyed, in addition to their spiritual and eternal
award, while thatwhich does notprocreate shall perish. Therefore, Abraham
was not at peace with the promise of his exceeding great reward, because of
his understanding that this reward refers to the reward of the soul. Hence he
said to the Lord be blessed: "What wilt thou give me, seeing that I go child-
less?" [Genesis 15:2]. That is to say, how can you bestow eternity on me
while I wander the world childless, without posterity."
Once again, the Jewish tradition — in this case, the opinion of rabbis 12 — correlates
with references from Hermes; as Abravanel indicates, the necessity of procreation
can be explained in accordance with Jewish and Hermetic tradition. Thus, within
the intellectual framework of the Renaissance Abravanel can compare without any
noticeable reticence one of the most cherished topics in Judaism, procreation, to a
similar view found in a pagan text. 13
It is within this framework that we should consider another kabbalistic topic,
Abravanel's vision of the sefirot, as expressed in a short treatise composed in
Venice in the early sixteenth century:
For of necessity things exist as a figuration 14 in the mind of the active agent
before that thing comes into being. Indubitably this image is the world of
the sefirot mentioned by the sages of the Kabbalists of the true wisdom
[who said] that the sefirot are the divine figurations with which the world
was created. Therefore they said that the sefirot are not created but are
emanated, and that all of them united together in Him, blessed be His
name, for they are the figurations of His loving-kindness and His willing
what He created. In truth, Plato set down the knowledge of the separate
general forms not as Aristotle understood them. 15
The affinity between "separate general forms," a conspicuously Platonic
idea, and the sefirot as understood by Abravanel is presented without any histor-
ical explanation. However, the phenomenological relationship may be understood
in terms of Abravanel's own historical view that Plato studied with Jeremiah in
Egypt and received his knowledge from the prophet. 16 Thus the phenomenological
similarity is part of a historical relationship that confers on the Jewish sages,
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viewed as Kabbalists, both precedence and, implicitly, superiority in matters of
theology.
Let me elaborate upon the difference between the attitude to Plato in Abravanel
and that of the medieval authors. As long as Abravanel could present an alternative
to Aristotelianism that could be regarded as still more venerable than the
Peripatetic master, as some medieval authors sought to do, Plato fulfilled a role
both as a foil to the widely disdained figure of Aristotle and as a thinker who
provided a philosophical parallel to some kabbalistic issues, so that the prestige of
Kabbalah could be augmented even in the eyes of some philosophers. However,
when the Platonic corpus became a cultural alternative, or at least a major source
for theology, as it did during the Renaissance in Italy, Jewish authors preferred to
stress not so much its affinity to Kabbalah, but rather Plato's status as a disciple of
an important Jewish figure. Instead of allowing for two independent sources of
knowledge, the Mosaic and the Greek or pagan, as happened in many cases in the
Florentine Renaissance, the Jewish intelligentsia preferred to stress that truth
stemmed ultimately from the Mosaic revelation, and that it had been subsequently
accepted by Plato but distorted by Aristotle. In any case, Aristotelianism was a less
influential philosophy among the Renaissance Jews than among their medieval
predecessors, and thus a less dangerous form of thought. A similar phenomenon
is discernible in the comparison made by Abravanel between the Kabbalah and
Plato, again in his Mif' alot 'Elohim:
Plato has caught a slight glimpse of the truth of this matter. As a result he
does not apply the Gate of Creation to the angels, but applies to them only
the Gate of Emanation, since their existence does not originate in the primal
matter, [a term] by which he designates the rest of the corporeal world.
Furthermore, concerning nonexistence, which he accepts bounds them by
nature, he does not assert their deterioration, as is the case with the other
parts of the world, but their return and adherence to eternal life, which he
calls Idea, that is to say, a divine quality. . . . And thus has been said by the
Kabbalists, that the spiritual angels are the bearers of His Throne of Glory.
It is therefore more appropriate that it be called Emanation and Aggregation
than Creation and Construction, or Nonexistence and Absence. 17
Despite Abravanel's explicit reference to Plato, it is the Neoplatonic view of
emanation that he has in mind, beginning with Plotinus — in this case, referring to
the emanation of the angels. According to Abravanel, Plato's approach is parallel
to the Kabbalists' concept of emanation. In the passage quoted above from his
answer to R Shaul ha-Kohen, Abravanel compares Plato's Ideas with another
kabbalistic topic. There, as in the quotation from the eschatological treatise
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Yeshu'ot Meshiho, the similarity between a view peculiar to Plato and a Jewish view —
in this case, as explicitly indicated, a kabbalistic approach — becomes apparent.
Such an accord is not accidental, for, as Abravanel implies, Plato had acquired
knowledge from Jeremiah in Egypt. In his Mif' alot 'Elohim we read:
The greatest among sages has said: "Who knows whether the spirit of man
goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to earth?" [Ecclesiastes
3:21]. For this human spirit is a celestial nature, originating in the region of
divine matters. Hence, it moves continually on its own behalf in a circular
movement, just like the heavenly bodies and the stars. Therefore, Plato the
sage has said that the soul moves of its own accord in a circular movement,
both in the body and outside the body, both prior to merging with it and
after the separation from it. For through this movement it shall obtain its
essence and acknowledge its Creator. For He is the soul's active essence and
perfection as long as heaven is on earth. In truth, this is a scientific clause
fitting for one of his stature, a student of the prophet Jeremiah, may he rest
in peace. And this spiritual corporeality is the bearer of the intelligent Spirit,
which is the spirit within man's heart. 18
Here Abravanel assesses not only the conceptual similarities between Jewish and
Platonic views but also their historical filiation; Plato studied with the prophet.
This topic recurs in Abravanel's Commentary on the Book ojjeremiah: "Following the
destruction [of the Temple] he left for Egypt, and there he dwelled for many years,
void of prophecy, until the day of his death, and, as attested by the rabbi and the
Greek sages, Plato spoke to him in Egypt." 19
It is against this background that the conceptual framework of Abravanel's
son, the famous Leone Ebreo, should be viewed. He was better acquainted than his
father with Neoplatonic literature, in its Latin translation, and used it in his own
work. 20 The "ancient theology" theory as presented in Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi
d'Amore provides a key to the understanding of his thought. There the younger
Abravanel writes:
Since I am a follower of Moses in matters relating to the divine, I hold to this
second theory, which is in accordance with Mosaic teaching. And Plato, who
was more versed in ancient lore than Aristotle, was of this opinion; whereas
Aristotle, who penetrated less deeply into abstract things, and unlike Plato
had not the testimony of our ancient theologians, denied that which was
hidden from his sight, and united primary beauty with supreme wisdom.
With this his mind was satisfied, and without seeing further he affirmed
supreme beauty and wisdom to be the first spiritual origin of all things.
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Plato, however, having learned from the ancient fathers in Egypt, had a
wider vision, even if it did not avail him to behold the hidden source of
supreme wisdom or highest beauty; and the latter he made to be the second
beginning of the universe, depending on the Most High God, the first cause
of all things. And although Plato was for so many years the teacher of
Aristotle, yet because he was instructed in the knowledge of things divine by
our ancient fathers [nostri uecchi] , his learning was more excellent and culled
from better masters than that of Aristotle. 21
Thus, the son like his father maintains that Plato acquired his knowledge from
the Jews. But in spite of his claim that this took place in Egypt, he uses the term
"our ancient [Jewish] fathers." An additional major difference between father and
son is the manner of introducing Aristotle into the succession of theologians
influenced, albeit indirectly, by Judaism. Whereas the father describes Aristotle as
opposed to Plato, the son speaks only of his "weaker," namely vaguer, compre-
hension of the truth, which resulted in his erring. In my opinion we can describe
the succession as follows: "Our ancestors" (the Kabbalists) are the "fathers" or
elders who taughtPlato, and he subsequently taught Aristotle. As regards the latter
pair, it is clear that the process of instruction involved deterioration in the quality
of comprehension. The same deterioration may therefore have also occurred in the
case of the first pair: the elders and Plato. If this assumption is correct, then it is
necessary to apply the rule that the first to come is superior to the rest, not only in
the succession of transmission but also in the hierarchy of the sages. However,
because Plato's affinity to the sages surpasses that of Aristotle to Plato, it should be
possible to use his views as a key to understanding the doctrine of the Jews.
Indeed, in the central issues dealt with above, such as the notion of the ideas
and the approach to the essence and antecedence of the soul, Judaism and
Platonism have, historically speaking, many points in common. The assumption
above, however, was that Plato had acquired his knowledge from the Jews.
Although the view that Plato was a student of Jeremiah is not unprecedented, 22
Isaac Abravanel does more than just indicate the existence of a connection between
Plato and the Jewish prophet, as other authors had already done; he also presents
well-defined Platonic views, which he compares with Jewish parallels. The expo-
sure of the similarities serves obliquely to promote the view claiming a Jewish
origin for Plato's thought. Thus Abravanel employs the "ancient theology" theory,
common among contemporary Italians, to support the notion of the superiority
of Jewish thought, at least in terms of its antiquity.
Within the framework of the "harmony" between the ancient philosophers and
the Jews, Isaac Abravanel also refers to Pythagoras. In his Commentary on the
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Pentateuch he adopts the same line of argument that he did with Plato: "In truth the
reason for levirate marriage is that which we find in our Master Moses, may he rest
in peace, and Pythagoras agreed with him. This opinion is the ancient traditional
opinion that the souls of the Jews are transferred or emerge from one body to the
other." 23 In his discussion Abravanel alludes to the possibility that this accord
likewise is a result of influence. Discussing the essence of the transmigration of
the soul, he writes:
And the religious proofs found for it in the hagiography by the Kabbalists have
flourished. Likewise the sayings of our sages of blessed memory mentioned
them, as also the divine Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai explicitly mentioned them.
And I shall embellish in lengthy discourse, while having no doubts at all. This
was also the opinion of the ancient philosophers, as can be seen from the
speech of the divine Socrates, which he delivered on his deathbed, as was
quoted by Plato in his name, in his book on the immortality of the soul, which
we call, in the language of the Greeks, Phaedo. He there brings the sayings of
Socrates to his students, at the time that the court of law in Athens passed the
judgment of execution upon him. This was also the opinion of Pythagoras, 24 as
it was also of the rest of the ancients. Perhaps they had received [this opinion]
from the first generations and from the age of the prophets. However, Aristotle,
and his commentators likewise, completely rejected this opinion, believing on
the contrary that the transmigration of souls is logically impossible. 25
A similar Adamite line of transmission is found in the elder Abravanel's Mif' alot
'Elohim; at the beginning of his discussion of the question of the creation of the
world, he ponders the sources of Moses' assumption that the world was created:
Perhaps Moses, our master, maintained this view by his own reason, because
it was reached by his speculation, or because it was accepted and taught to
him by his ancestors and elders. There is no doubt that this view was agreed
upon by the [twelve] tribes, and Moses received it from Qehat, and Qehat
received it from Jacob his grandfather, and Jacob received it from Shem the
son of Noah, whom he saw and with whom he studied. And Shem received
it from Methuselah, because the former saw and received from the mouth
of Methuselah; and Methuselah from Adam, who saw it. . . . Thence this
tradition [ha-Qabbalah] reached Moses from his ancestors and elders by
means of four intermediaries. 26
The Adamite tradition turns into a Mosaic tradition because the major inheritor
of its content was Moses; here no place is allocated to the pagan figures. In
contrast to the earlier quotation from Mif' alot 'Elohim above, where he proposes a
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concordance between the Jewish view and the pagan one, when Abravanel deals
with the emergence of the Mosaic tradition he turns to the earliest possible source:
Adam. He prefers the argument of antiquity even to the argument of the superior-
ity of Moses' prophecy, which was a principle of medieval Jewish philosophy. I
suspect that this emphasis on the prisca theologia Adamita has something to do with
the prisca theolcujia pacjana: trying to counteract or subvert the authority of the pagan
theologians, Abravanel not only identifies the most ancient of them, Hermes, with
a biblical figure, but also ascribes to the Mosaic tradition a pedigree that can easily
compete with the claims of the emerging Renaissance philosophy.
A perusal of Jewish medieval sources demonstrates that the argument for an
Adamite tradition inherited by the Jews is not an innovation by Abravanel; it is
found from time to time in both philosophical and mystical writings. So, for
example, the unknown author of Sejer Berit Menuhah, an important kabbalistic writ-
ing dating from the fourteenth century, argues in the proemium that the divine
name was transmitted from Adam to Seth, Enos, Yered, Methuselah, Lemech,
Noah, Shem, Heber, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who transmitted it to his sons,
especially to Levi, who handed it down to Amram, Moses, Aharon, and so on. 27 A
similar view was advanced at the beginning of the fifteenth century by the Spanish
Kabbalist R Shem Tov ben Shem Tov. 28 1 am not sure that these traditions served
as a paradigm for the Abravanels; historically there is no obstacle.
However, a kabbalistic influence is more plausible in the case of the son, who
mentions the Kabbalists explicitly. On the other hand, Jewish philosophers offered
other lines of transmission. We have already mentioned the view of R Yehudah
ha-Levi as to the Adamite origin of the tradition inherited by the Jews. I have no
doubt that this view ofboth philosophers and Kabbalists influenced the Abravanels;
the father mentions it in Mif'alot 'Elohim. 20 Indeed, another medieval Jewish
philosopher, R. Shem Tov Falaquera, had already traced the transmission of
philosophical traditions to pre-Mosaic biblical figures such as Shem, Heber, and
Abraham. 30 However, the exact source of Abravanel's view of the Adamite origin of
wisdom does not matter very much; it is enough to know that Adamite claims were
already available in Jewish tradition, and I assume that they were used to offer an
alternative to other genealogies of truth as found in Ficino's writings. However, I
would like to dwell upon this issue more. Someone can argue that it is merely a
matter of coincidence that even in a work in which the ancient theologians are
mentioned, Abravanel offers the classical Adamite line, as proposed by the twelfth-
century Spanish Jewish philosopher Yehudah ha-Levi; and that even in the case of
the son, who was undeniably better acquainted with Renaissance thought, the
absence of the Ficinian line is insignificant. Nevertheless, I am skeptical about
such an explanation. The preference for the Adamite line was more convenient,
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since it would attribute to the Jewish tradition, and, in the case of the son, to the
Kabbalah, a role more important than that attributed by Christian thinkers to a
variety of pagan figures. In his treatment of Moses and the other lawgivers Ficino
may conclude that Moses was perhaps considered the most important, but his
status is not totally different from the others, 31 who were also conceived to be
divinely inspired. 32 To attribute the Jewish tradition to Moses could mean no more
than that it is a relatively late lore, which is comparable to all the others, some of
them deemed to be even earlier than the Sinaitic revelation. In order to surpass the
pagan figures in the matter of antiquity, it was more convenient to assume an
Adamite origin for Judaism. In a period when pre-Adamite views were not yet
widespread, 33 this was the maximum that someone could have done. In one of
Ficino's discussions of the four-lettered divine names, he shows an acquaintance
with an Adamite tradition concerning these names. 34 Thus the standard of antiq-
uity proposed by Ficino had to be met by at least a similar claim of antiquity.
There is no doubt that the great majority of the medieval genealogies of
religious knowledge, especially those related to Kabbalah, attributed the central
role in the formation of the Jewish tradition to Moses and not to Adam. The
Abravanels abandoned the particularist understanding of Judaism as stemming
from a Mosaic revelation alone but preferred the backing of a tradition of a hoary
antiquity, namely one deriving from Adam, which has a potential universalist
scope. The uniqueness of the Jewish religion is based not only on the exceptional
revelation to Moses as a unique religious leader, as some medieval thinkers claimed,
but also on the ancient tradition originating with Adam, as preserved by the Jews.
3. R. Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of Genazzano
A positive appropriation of the prisca theolcujia theory can also be detected in R,
Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of Genazzano, 35 a late-fifteenth-century Italian
Kabbalist, who seems to be one of the first who explicitly connected Zoroastrianism,
Pythagoreanism, and Kabbalah. In the context of a discussion on the metempsy-
chosis and Zoroaster he writes: "I have also found that similar views were held
by Numenius the Pythagorean and by Orlandus. 36 Numenius, out of his love
of Moses' Torah, thought that Moses' soul had been reincarnated in his own
body. 37 . . . And as regards this statement, 38 according to which the Kabbalists
maintained that human souls are reincarnated in animal bodies, I answer that this
view is to be found only in the works of the later Kabbalists, 39 and I did not find any
support for this view in our sages' statements. However, I have found that this is
the opinion of a certain ancient philosopher, namely Pythagoras and his sect." 40
From the way in which Genazzano has earlier presented Zoroaster, and from
the way in which he describes Numenius as also having derived his knowledge
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from Jewish sources, we may assume that this Kabbalist regarded the theory of
metempsychosis as an authentic kabbalistic view, which subsequently reached
Pythagoras in one way or another. However, with regard to the specific topic of
reincarnation in animal bodies, the Kabbalist appears to be unable to corroborate
it in earlier Jewish sources, and so mentions Pythagoras.
The implications are difficult to sort out: Does R Elijah mean that Pythagoras
preserved ancient Jewish traditions that do not occur in the "ancient" kabbalistic
texts, but only in the later layers of Kabbalah? Or is he criticizing the later Kabbalists
for inventing a new speculation regarding metempsychosis, on the ground of
alien material extant in Pythagoreanism? Whatever the answer may be, it is obvi-
ous that this Kabbalist presupposes an affinity between Pythagoras and a major
kabbalistic principle.
Let me turn to another main protagonist of the prisca theologia, Zoroaster.
Although Ficino and Pico were reluctant to enroll Zoroaster in the tradition of
unilinear transmission, several of Ficino's contemporaries were not. For example,
R Elijah of Genazzano asserts: "Behold, I have found in an ancient book attri-
buted to a wise man called Zoroaster the following statement: Metempsychosis
was received by the Hindus from the Persians, and by the Persians from the
Egyptians; by the Egyptians from the Chaldeans, and by the Chaldeans from
Abraham. 41 They expelled him from their land, since they hated him because he
said that the soul is the source of movement and causes the movement of matter
and there are many souls." 42
It is conspicuous that on the theory of metempsychosis this Jewish Italian
Kabbalist attempts to promote a unilinear tradition originating with Abraham, with
Zoroaster only inheriting it from the patriarch. The source for this tradition, the
Kabbalist asserts, is an ancient book. Thus we may assume that a pre-Renaissance
source proposed a unilinear tradition in which Zoroaster was not the progenitor of
the ancient wisdom but rather a disciple of the Mosaic lore. Indeed, the attribution
of the kabbalistic theory of metempsychosis to Abraham assumes that Kabbalah,
which for the Kabbalists constituted the esoteric interpretation of Judaism, had
already been cultivated by this patriarch. 43 Such an assessment is corroborated by
the fact that Zoroaster had already been presented in the Middle Ages as the student
of Abraham, as well as by another passage referring to Zoroaster in the same book
by Elijah of Genazzano: "It is known that Abraham our forefather, blessed be his
memory, was a great sage, even before the King of the kings of kings revealed to
him matters of astrology 44 and natural sciences, to a very great extent, as found in
ancient books such as the Book of Nabbatean Agriculture 45 and the Book o/Zoroaster . . .
dealing with the controversies that he [Abraham] engaged in with the Chaldeans,
even before the divine presence was revealed to him." 46
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Prisca Theologia
Thus we learn that Genazzano possessed a book attributed to Zoroaster, in
which Abraham was mentioned. Here, too, the underlying assumption is that
Zoroaster learned something from Abraham about the natural sciences, a view
that corroborates the tradition that Zoroaster was well acquainted with the seven
liberal arts. This passage was in existence in an "ancient book," possibly one of
the writings of the fifteenth-century Byzantine Platonic philosopher Georgius
Gemistos Plethon, 47 or in an even earlier source. The Jewish Kabbalist's source
was apparently known to Ficino, who cites Alexander and Eupolemus as authori-
ties to the effect that Abraham taught Zoroaster astrology, which Abraham him-
self had learned from the successors of Enoch. 48 Thus, the Christian author was
clearly in possession of a source asserting a unilinear tradition traceable from
Zoroaster to Enoch, with Abraham as a direct mentor to Zoroaster. Thus, the
absence of Zoroaster from Ficino's genealogy of religious knowledge and philoso-
phy may represent a deliberate choice not to include this figure in the line of the
Jewish tradition, whereas in most of Ficino's discussions he allows for the exis-
tence of a separate, independent line of transmission. As far as I know, Ficino
mentions a relationship between Zoroaster and the biblical tradition only one
other time, when stating that in Didymus's Commentary on Genesis, Zoroaster was
identified with Ham, the son of Noah, and that the Hebrews also called him
Chanaan. 49 These two allusions to other sources are exceptional in Ficino's volu-
minous work, where he usually presents Zoroaster's place in the chain of the
pagan philosophy as his own idea.
It seems clear that a tradition connecting Zoroaster with Abraham was available
to both Jews and Christians in the Renaissance. 50 However, Jews were reluctant to
grant a role to such a figure in the transmission of Jewish tradition. Ficino and
Pico, in contrast, allowed for a multilinear transmission of philosophy and reli-
gious knowledge. In Ficino's case at least, this choice of a multilinear option
seems to have been deliberate, and also to have involved a change of mind: whereas
in his 1476 treatise De religione Christiana he amasses a variety of quotations from
patristic sources to prove the influence of biblical figures on the prisca theologia, in
his later commentaries on Plato's dialogues he presents the ancient theologians as
totally independent from biblical influence. It is also possible that the difference in
treatment is related to the very different subject matters of these books: in his
"pagan" books dealing with Plato's thought he proposes the multilinear approach,
while in the Christian book he is much more unilinear. 51
4. Some Later Developments
Through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Zoroaster was rarely mentioned by
Jewish authors. The only exceptions that I know of are R Gedalyah ben Yehiyah
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Prisca Theologia
and R. Abraham Yagel. Both quote a passage in which Zoroaster is described as
follows: "Ancient Zoroaster was the father of all the magicians, the first of them all
to write and compose books on this craft. He was Ham, the son of Noah. ... In
his wisdom he discovered the seven disciplines, wrote them on seven pillars of
metal and on seven pillars of charred stone 52 so that it would be a memorial of his
great wisdom and understanding for the generations to come." 53 Most of the
details of this text can be found in earlier sources; Ficino was presumably
the source of the identification of Zoroaster as Ham and as the master of the
magicians. 54 In their inclusion of Zoroaster in the line of transmission of knowl-
edge, Yehiya and Yagel inscribe themselves as followers of the Christian
Renaissance thinkers. This affinity becomes obvious from Yagel's description of
the ancient theologians, including Zoroaster: "the important sages among the
gentiles never saw the lights oftheTorah, not of worship, prophecy, wonders, and
miracles. . . . Listen to what these sages spoke about the creator. . . . For the
ancient sages saw the light of life." 55 Seeing the light of life is certainly a positive
evaluation, although it seems to be much more a matter of natural knowledge that
they reached independently, rather than a religious revelation that they did not
enjoy.
At the end of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, in response to the
strong Christian Renaissance culture around them, lewish intellectuals showed
ever greater openness to the notion of multilinear transmission of knowledge. 56 In
doing so they effected a 180-degree change from a century earlier, when Jews like
Abravanel and Genazzano transformed the Christian multilinear theory of prisca
theologia into a unilinear one.
•i 7 6-
H
R. YOHANAN BEN YITZHAQ
ALEMANNO
i. A Cosmopolitan Intellectual
Northern Italy had a significant Ashkenazi population at least from the late
thirteenth century. One of the most important Jewish intellectuals in the period
under discussion, Yohanan Alemanno, was born in Mantua in 1435 or 1436, the
son of a certain R Yitzhaq, who apparently made his living selling manuscripts. 1
Yohanan's grandfather R. Elijah was a physician; he had either been born in
Germany or his family had come from there, and he lived for a while in France and
then in Aragon, where Yitzhaq presumably married a Spanish woman. The entire
family accompanied Elijah to the Vatican, where the king of Aragon sent him on an
embassy, while the family apparently remained in Italy. Alemanno, who believed in
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YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQ ALEMANNO
the importance of climate as a determinant of different qualities in humans, saw
himself as embodying the best qualities of all four countries experienced by his
family. The family name that he adopted, Alemanno, was the Italian version of
"Ashkenazi, " and he was very proud of his extraction. 2 The young Yohanan studied
with a famous figure in Mantua, R Yehudah Messer Leon, and received the title of
doctor. 3 For many years he lived in Florence, where he had an association with
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, whom he mentions explicitly in one of his books,
and played a role in the life of the Jewish community there. 4
The date of his death is not clear. He was still alive in 1505, when he was working
on an unfinished commentary on Genesis, 'Einei ha-'Edah. And it may be that a scholar
in Jerusalem, writing to Italy in 1522, referred to him when he mentioned that a
certain "very old man," ha-Yashish, named Yohanan Ashkenazi, a "universal man,"
hakham kolel, had come to Jerusalem. 5 1 am inclined to accept this identification not
only because of the complete correspondence in names and age but especially
because of the epithet he-hakham fia-kolel, the Hebrew form for uomo universale, which
accords perfectly with Alemanno's vast culture. Indeed, in his writings he displays a
stunning spectrum of knowledge, including not only the classical Jewish layers of
literature but also Arabic and Jewish philosophy, Kabbalah, the sciences, and magic.
Alemanno left a substantial literary heritage, most of which still survives in
autograph manuscripts. It consists of a lengthy commentary on the Song of Songs,
titled Hesheq Shlomo (The Desire of Solomon), of which only the introduction has
been printed as Sha'ar ha-Hesheq. 6 This is perhaps the longest commentary on this
biblical book, and it is one of the first Renaissance books to emphasize the impor-
tance of this king as a builder, magician, and mystic. As Alemanno explicitly con-
fesses, he was encouraged by Pico della Mirandola to write it. Another voluminous
book, Hei ha-'OIamim, deals mainly with the different stages of human develop-
ment. 7 His much shorter, unfinished commentary on Genesis survives in an
autograph manuscript, as does a lengthy and very precious untitled treatise that
contributes very important material for the understanding of his positions on
Kabbalah. 8 Last, but not least, in Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234 (Reggio 23), we have
the large autograph Collectanea of Alemanno's notes, containing quotations from a
welter of sources important both for understanding the genesis of Alemanno's
thought and for mapping what Jewish material was available in Florence in the last
third of the fifteenth century.
2. SefirotandTranscendentals
Alemanno's basic approaches to knowledge can be described as on the one hand
a systematic hierarchical arrangement of different forms of speculative literature,
and on the other as hermeneutical. 9 Here I would like to describe briefly the
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YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQ ALEMANNO
hermeneutical approach, which involves the interpretation of one system of thought,
the kabbalistic one, in relation to the basic theses of another system. We can designate
Alemanno's hermeneutical approach as intercorporal, a term I propose for under-
standing many of the medieval developments in systematic exegesis of the Hebrew
Bible, involving the application of concepts taken from other bodies of knowledge. 10
This intercorporal approach is reflected strongly in the following passage:
The ancients believed in the existence often spiritual numbers. ... It seems
that Plato thought that there are ten spiritual numbers of which one may
speak, but one may not speak of the First Cause, because of its great conceal-
ment. However, they [the numbers] approximate its existence to such an
extent that we may call these effects by a name that cannot be ascribed to the
movers of corporeal bodies. However, in the opinion of the Kabbalists, one
may say so of the sefirot. . . . This is what Plato wrote in the work ha-'Atzamim
ha-'Elyonim" as quoted by Zekhariyahu in the book 'Imrei Shefer. 12 From it fol-
lows that in Plato's view, the first effects are called sefirot because they may be
numbered, unlike the First Cause, and therefore he did not call them movers. 1 '
Alemanno was undoubtedly aware of the semantic similarity between the terms
sefirot and mispparim, both Hebrew words for "numbers." Both were considered as
separate, namely spiritual, beings, and therefore he could assume that the affinity
between the two concepts was not accidental. Again, on the basis of this quotation
alone, one may assume that Plato — actually Proclus, a version of whose thought
was quoted here from an unknown translation of Liber de Causis — not only pre-
sented a doctrine of separate, namely spiritual, numbers similar to the kabbalistic
sefirot, but did so independently of the kabbalistic traditions. Elsewhere, however,
as we have seen in chapter 13 , Alemanno expresses the view that Plato studied with
Jeremiah. 14 Alemanno is interested in the nature of the sefirot mostly as part of a
cosmological discussion; in one of his round notes in the margin of a quotation
from a commentary by R. Yehudah Hayyat, a Spanish Kabbalist whose activity will
preoccupy us later, on Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut, we read: "They said that the sefirot
are intermediary between the world of eternal rest, that is, 'Ein Sqf, and the world
of motion, that is, the world of the spheres; this is the reason why sometimes they
are in a state of rest and sometimes in motion, as it is the nature of the intermedi-
ary, composed as it is from the extremes." 15 Instead of the dynamic view of the
sefirot in the work of the Spanish Kabbalist, copied by Alemanno, as connected to
human activity through the commandments related to the processes in the sefirotic
world, what I have called theurgy, Alemanno adopts a view of the sefirot as inter-
mediary, closer to the theory of vessels or instruments, whose motion is caused
by their ontological status and not by human acts. In the cultural environment
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YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQALEMANNO
of Alemanno, in the works of R. Yehi'el Nissim of Pisa, whose grandfather
was Alemanno's patron, and whose uncle, R. Yitzhaq of Pisa, was Alemanno's
student, we find a similar stand, though with a peculiar emphasis:
The upper creatures are a paradigm for the lower creatures. This is because
every lower thing has a superior power from which it came into existence. 16
This resembles the relationship of the shadow to the object that casts it. . . .
Even the ancient philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato taught and
made statements about this. However, the matter was not revealed to
them in a clear way, but they walked in darkness, they attained and they did
not attain [noge'a ue-'eino noge'a] , since the universals and the forms indicated
by Plato hinted at this. . . . And since they did not receive the truth as it
is but groped like the blind in darkness, so were their speculation and
sayings. And we shall hold to the words of our ancient sages, which are true
and were received from the prophets, blessed by their memory. And we
shall assume that if this is so, the lower things need the upper one, this
being a strict necessity, and the upper things need the lower one, to a limited
extent, so that the entire world turns out to be one entity [ke-'ish 'ehad] , and
in this manner each of the individual things will be distributed to the ten
sefirot as if you will say that a certain creature is to be attributed to a certain
sefirah. 17
The similarity between the sefirotic realm and the lower beings is perceived as
similar to the Platonic and Pythagorean views.
However, R Yehi'el Nissim asserts, the pagan philosophers did not receive the
naked truth but a dim revelation, different from the clear vision of the Jewish sages
and prophets. The reason for and significance of the difference are not explicidy
indicated; I shall try to guess them from the context. The similarity is manifesdy
correct as far as the paradigmatic relationship of the upper and lower beings is
concerned; in both cases the lower world reflects the upper one. However, the
limited dependence of the upper on the lower one seems to be the nexus of the
divergence between the Jewish and pagan sages. For the Kabbalists, the upper
world, namely the sefirot, requires human worship in order to function in a per-
fect way, a view that is foreign to Plato. Moreover, according to R Yehi'el Nissim,
the possibility of influencing the supernal powers is related to the fact that the
sefirotic realm is to be conceived as having an anthropomorphic structure; thus
man, by reflecting this structure in his shape, can also influence it by his deeds.
This point, elaborated by the Italian Kabbalist in a discussion immediately follow-
ing the quotation above, is a crucial view of the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah,
and R Yehi'el Nissim correctly comprehended the difference beyond the affinity
•i8o-
YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQALEMANNO
between the two types of thought. Elsewhere this author portrays Plato in similar
terms:
From the words of Plato it seems that he is close to the view of the sages,
blessed be their memory, when he says that the lower and corporeal world is
in the likeness and image of the upper world. And he also said that there are
forms in the divine mind, named universals [kelalim] , which are similar to
the individuals. Nevertheless it seems to me that he did not enter [the inmost
part] to know truly the depth of the significance of the Torah and her sages,
blessed be their memory, but he remained outside the court, he attains and
he did not attain; therefore, he and the other ancient [philosophers] could
not know the truth of the quintessence of the things, but they came close
[to the Jewish sages] as it was said in the Midrash ha-Ne'elam: lS "They are
close to the path of [kabbalistic] truth." 19
As in the case of the earlier quotation above, this one is followed by a long dis-
cussion of the centrality of man in ensuring the unity of the world. Here, too, the
ultimate knowledge is the awareness not only of the paradigmatic relations but
also of the dynamic influence of religious deeds, the mitziuot, on the higher world.
Plato was acquainted with the starting point of the lore of Kabbalah, its structural
parallelism, but the application of this parallelism in actual religious life escaped
him. In the first discussion, it seems that the Kabbalist is attributing to Plato the
status of an inhabitant of the cave who did not receive the clear-cut revelation of the
source, or the ideas, since they are merely dependent on the shadows, in contrast to
the Kabbalists, whose revelation of the truth is complete. In the second quotation,
the Kabbalist uses the well-known image of the palace, found in the Guide, to indi-
cate that Plato was not acquainted with the inmost secrets of theology. The dynamic
relationship so characteristic of the theurgical mysticism in Judaism disappears in
the comparison of the Platonic ideas with the kabbalistic sefirot.
In general, Alemanno describes Plato as being in positive relation with Jewish
culture; in his commentary on the Song of Songs, Hesheq Shlomo, he distinguishes
between two ancient types of philosophers. The first was "the sect of the ancient
ones, from hoary antiquity up to the generation when prophecy disappeared. They
and their sons and disciples thirstily drank in their [the prophets'] words up to
Plato, who was in their [the prophets'] days and in their times. The second sect
commenced when prophecy ceased and the days of the evil came, from the time of
Aristotle and later, up to our days." 20 Here Platonic lore is clearly described as
being the result of the influence of the Hebrew prophets. In fact, valid philosophy
is considered as contemporary with ancient Israelite prophecy and as having
ceased together with it.
yohanan ben yltzhaq alemanno
3. Kabbalah and Magic
The philosophically oriented interpretation of Kabbalah is accompanied by a magi-
cally oriented interpretation of this lore. The two readings of Kabbalah are not
contradictory of each other, but are sometimes even reinforcing. Magic was under-
stood in many contexts as part of the order of nature, magia naturalis, and knowledge
of the sefirot was tantamount to knowing the highest powers that governed the
world and so being able to manipulate what happened on the mundane level.
Alemanno is one of the most outspoken authors of what I propose to call the talis-
manic model in Kabbalah, namely one in which the main purpose of religious
activity is the drawing down of the supernal spiritualities, stemming from the celes-
tial bodies and the sefirotic realm, by performing a certain ritual. 21 As we saw in
chapter n, the anonymous SeferToledot 'Adam had already combined ecstatic Kabbalah
with astromagic. Alemanno, however, offers a much more learned and sophisti-
cated synthesis of Kabbalah and magic. An outstanding example of this model
occurs in his Liqqutim, or Collectanea, in a description of the following ritual. At first
the Kabbalist recites divine names, which he reads to himself from a Torah scroll:
After the external cleansings of the body and an inner change and spiritual
purification from all taint, one becomes as clear and pure as the heavens.
Once one has divested oneself of all material thoughts, let him read only the
Torah and the divine names written there. There shall be revealed awesome
secrets and such divine visions as may be emanated upon pure clear souls
who are prepared to receive them as the verse said: "Make ready for three days
and wash your clothing" [Exodus 19:15]. For there are three preparations: of
the exterior [the body], of the interior, and of the imagination."
By reading the Torah as a series of divine names, man receives an initial
infusion of power. This reading is preceded by a series of "preparations" that are
reminiscent of the purifications performed by the Jews before the giving of the
Torah at Sinai. The second stage of the process is described in a continuation of
the passage. The Torah scroll itself becomes imbued with the spiritual force. At
this time, "the writing of God, the spirit of the living God, shall descend upon the
written scroll." In the expression "the writing of God" Alemanno refers directly to
the giving of the Torah at Sinai as described in Exodus. A personal experience of
the revelation of the law is a conventional notion in the Kabbalah. What is new and
striking in the process described by Alemanno is the similarity of the ceremony to
the ritual of dedication found in books of magic:
When a man devotes a great amount of time, the intermittent becomes
habitual. When he immerses himself in these things, then such a great efflux
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YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQ ALEMANNO
will come to him that he will be able to cause the spirit of God to descend
upon him and hover above him and flutter about him all the day. Not only
that, but "the writing of God, the spirit of the living God" will descend upon
the scroll to such a degree that the scroll will give him power to work signs
and wonders in the world. And such are the books called segretti, and all the
incantations are the secret words [segretti] that come from evil spirits.
Therefore, the Torah forbade these practices. The Torah of Moses, however
is entirely sealed and closed by the name of the Holy One, blessed be He.
Therefore, its powers are many, and such is the book of Psalms. This is a
great secret, hidden from the eye of the blind and the cunning. 23
Thus in Alemanno's Collectanea we find both elements of Pico's definition of the
practical Kabbalah: first the reading of divine names in the Torah, and then the
reception of efflux. The connection between the use of divine names and the recep-
tion of emanation is also mentioned in the book Takhlit he-Hakham, better known
in medieval Christian Europe as Picatrix, a work read by both Pico and Alemanno:
"Aristotle said ... in ancient times, divine names had a certain ability to bring
spiritual power to earth. At times, these powers descended below. At others, they
killed the man who used them." 24 Neither in Alemanno nor in this quotation from
Sefer Takhlit he-Hakham is there any mention of practical Kabbalah.
Careful study of Alemanno's statements indicates that the practice he suggests
is related to the Torah scroll. The words of the Torah are, according to his view, a
series of names from which meaning may be derived by reference to another
source: "The ancient sages said that all the Torah is but one name, and all its
words are powerful names and each and every verse is an additional name." 25 This
view originated in the books Sefer Shimmushei Torah and Sefer Shimmushei Tehilim and
in similar traditions, which reached the Kabbalists R Ezra, R Azriel, and R Moses
ben Nahman in Gerona. 26 But Alemanno gives the doctrines an unequivocally
magical interpretation. The Torah read as a series of names is translated into an
instrument of magic: "Anyone who knows the science of the stars and constella-
tions that emanate upon the creatures on Earth may interpret the entire Torah
according to the signs and rules of astrology. This is true of the masters of both
theoretical and practical astrology. Any man, either good or evil, who knows the
work of the pure and impure angels who are superior to the stars may draw their
fragrance upon our heads, for he has given a kabbalistic interpretation to the
entire Torah. This matter includes the masters of both the speculative and
the practical sciences of the sefirot." 27
The Torah may be read in two ways, astrologically and kabbalistically. Each
way has a speculative and a practical component. It seems to me that through the
•i8 3 -
YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQ ALEMANNO
practical interpretation of the Torah (the reading of the divine names), one "may
draw their fragrance upon our heads." This drawing down of the divine influx
upon oneself is both a magical and a mystical attainment, achieved by means of
the ritualistic recitation of the Torah. If my analysis of Alemanno's view is correct,
then his understanding of practical Kabbalah is similar to Pico's. Both consider
the practical Kabbalah to include the use of divine names, which are connected to
the descent and activation of spiritual forces in the world. The definitions of prac-
tical Kabbalah found in the writings of Pico and Alemanno share another common
point. Pico considered as forbidden those kabbalistic practices that employ divine
names to charm devils. 28 This distinction between pure and impure forms of prac-
tical Kabbalah is suggested by the previous quotation from Alemanno about pure
and impure forces above the stars. At the end of the quotation from the Collectanea,
Alemanno mentions incantations that are forbidden by the Torah. These are
different from the reading of the Torah in a magical way, which is permitted.
For Alemanno, then, the reading of a Torah scroll becomes a process for the
acquisition of magical powers originating in the emanation of higher forces, and
this process has two stages. The person receives an initial pulsation of the divine
efflux, and only then, after he has become habituated, can he receive the additional
efflux, "the spirit of the living God." Alemanno describes this second stage as
"bringing down into oneself the spirit of God" (the phrase is from the SejerYetzirah),
thus enabling the person to perform signs and wonders — in my opinion an
adaptation of the famous magical formula horadat ha-ruhaniyyut — the causing of
the descent of the astral spirituality — which appears in many of the texts that
Alemanno had before him, as well as in his writings. 29 The assumption that these
are cognate idioms is supported by the fact that the expression occurs in the con-
text of a discussion of magic. Although Alemanno's interpretation of the Torah by
the method of practical Kabbalah appears in a manuscript written at the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century, now in Paris, it is likely that Alemanno formed
his opinion on the matter earlier than that. In his Behinat ha-Dat, as we saw in
chapter 12, R. Elijah del Medigo opposed those who viewed the Torah and the
commandments as a means of causing the descent of spiritual forces. We may
assume that del Medigo's remarks are a criticism of Alemanno. Del Medigo was a
member of Pico's intellectual circle until about 1490 and probably heard
Alemanno's view expressed by intellectual colleagues.
The analogous structure of the magical and a kabbalistic reading of the
Torah described in Alemanno's untitled treatise has an interesting parallel in his
Collectanea: "The astrologer studies every one of the creatures in relation to one of
the seven planets. In the same manner, the Kabbalist studies every word of the
Torah, as stated before in connection with the commandments of the Torah. That
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YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQALEMANNO
is, he studies the sefirah to which it is related. The astrologer studies the movements
and governance of the stars. In the same way the Kabbalist knows what will happen
to people in the future by reference to the influence and efflux of the sefirot. This is
in accordance with the activities and movements of those who perform the com-
mandments and divine service. This method is superior to that of the astrologer." 30
Thus kabbalistic study of the Torah is no longer seen as leading to preoccupation
with the hidden processes of divinity. The Kabbalist has become a "superastrolo-
ger" who utilizes his knowledge to foresee the future. A similar conception is found
in Pico's Theses, where we read: "Just as true astrology teaches us to read the books
of God, so too does the Kabbalah teach us to read the books of the law." 31 The prac-
tical side of astrology can be identified with magia naturalis, for it teaches the way to
receive the influx of higher powers. Kabbalah is a higher form of magic because its
speculative foundation is, as Pico emphasizes here, superior to that of astrology. In
his book Shir ha-Ma'alot, Alemanno declares practical Kabbalah to be superior to
astrology, but dismisses astral magic based upon the science of the stars:
The Kabbalists say that every limb of a man's body has a spiritual power
corresponding to it in the sefirah Malkhut. 32 . . . When a man performs one of
the commandments by means of one of his corporeal limbs, that limb is read-
ied to become a seat and home for the supernal power that is its likeness. . . .
Our patriarch Abraham [Abulafia] was the first to discover this wondrous
science ... as proven by his book Sejer Yetzirah, which was composed in accor-
dance with this principle. It demonstrates how the likeness of each and every
limb is to be found in the celestial spheres and stars and how matters stand in
the spiritual world, which he terms the world of letters. . . . And study how
this ancient science resembles the ancient science of astrology, which found
that every limb and form and corporeal body that exists in the world of change
has a likeness in the world of celestial motion in the stars and their forms. The
astrologers prepared every thing in a way as to receive the efflux proper to it.
However, this is a material craft that is forbidden, flawed, and impure. But the
wisdom of Abraham is a spiritual craft that is perfect and pure and permitted,
and his sons, Isaac and Jacob, followed in his path. 33
Alemanno's words indicate the nature of the new interpretation of the Torah.
In his view, the Kabbalists learn about future events from the Torah. This method
is superior to that of the astrologers, who learn from the stars. As demonstrated,
practical Kabbalah teaches man how to make contact with magic forces. Thus,
Kabbalah is transformed from speculation upon the mysteries of the divinity as an
end in itself into a sophisticated means of exerting human influence superior
to astrology or magic. This change in the essence of Kabbalah appears in the
■185.
YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQ ALEMANNO
writings of both Alemanno and Pico, his student, but I believe that Alemanno was
its source. This opinion is supported not only by the chronological data but also by
the fact that Alemanno's view of Kabbalah as magic belongs to his broader con-
ception, while in Pico's writings the subject receives only limited treatment in a
few sentences. For Alemanno, the Torah had unique properties, and the Kabbalah
amounted to instruction in their application. For him, Moses was a magician who
knew how to make use of kabbalistic principles:
The Kabbalists believe that Moses, peace be with him, had precise knowledge
of the spiritual world, which is called the world of sefirot, and divine names,
or the world of letters. Moses knew how to direct his thoughts and prayers so
as to improve the divine efflux that the Kabbalists call "channels." Moses'
action caused the channels to emanate upon the lower world in accordance
with his will. By means of that efflux, he created anything he wished, just as
God created the world by means of various emanations. Whenever he wanted
to perform signs and wonders, Moses would pray and utter divine names,
words, and meditations until he had intensified those emanations. The
emanations then descended into the world and created new supernatural
things. With that Moses split the sea, opened up the earth, and the like. 34
Alemanno's view of Moses was an old idea found also in many non-Jewish
sources. 35 The magic power of the word is described in a kabbalistic context, and
here Moses becomes a kabbalistic magician. Alemanno also uses this approach in
evaluating prophecy in general: "A prophet has the power to cause the emanation
of divine efflux from 'Ein Sof upon the hyle [hylic matter] by the intermediary of the
sefirah Malkhut. In this way the prophet performs wondrous deeds, impossible
in nature." 36 The Tabernacle and Temple also have a clearly magical function.
Alemanno describes them as a sort of great talisman, which enabled the Jews to
receive the divine emanations of the sefirot. In his Collectanea, Alemanno offers
four explanations of the nature of the Tabernacle and its vessels, of which the third
and fourth are relevant:
For the people were educated to believe in the possibility of causing spiritual
forces and emanations to descend from above by means of preparations
made by man for that purpose, such as talismans, garments, foods, and
special objects . . . just as when Moses our master, peace be with him,
prepared the Golden Calf. The intention was only to cause the spiritual
forces to descend by means of a physical body. In Ibn Ezra's opinion, they
made a figure of Aquarius in midsky and Taurus rising, for those had the
power necessary to ease their way in the wilderness, a desolate place. In
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YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQALEMANNO
Nahmanides' opinion, they directed their meditation to the figure of the ox
on the left-hand side of the Merkavah in order to be protected from the attri-
bute of strict judgment. Therefore, they had to make an ark and vessels
capable of receiving those emanations. The fourth reason was to increase
those actions such as the offering of sacrifices, which give protection and
cause good emanations to descend and forestall the bad emanations, which
descend from the stars and their heavenly courses. The purpose of most of
the commandments is to safeguard the prophetic efflux, which issues above
and descends upon the human intellect. Therefore, it was necessary to have
various heavy large vessels and a tabernacle to contain them. 37
The Tabernacle is described as a complex talisman that "guards" and "causes
the descent" of spiritual forces. The idea that the Tabernacle "guards" the descent
of spiritual forces requires some clarification. From the context it is clear that
this is not simply protection against "evil events." Just after the passage above,
Alemanno clarifies: "When Israel observes the Temple service, the Holy Spirit
rests upon its noble men, for the power of the human soul is increased, and they
prophesy." 38 This trend of thought continues the views of the fourteenth-century
Spanish thinkers, whose relationship to Kabbalah was rather loose, but the con-
nection to this mystical lore becomes much stronger in Alemanno's Kabbalah,
and in some forms of Safedian Kabbalah. 39
This attribution of the making of the Golden Calf to Moses is very strange; I
have found no parallel to it in Hebrew literature. 40 It is part of a magic understand-
ing of Judaism, which has few parallels in Jewish high culture. However, Giordano
Bruno reports as a doctrine of the "Kabbalists" that Moses prepared the Golden
Calf and the Brass Serpent, under the aegis of the planets, for magical purposes. 41
This view is consonant with Alemanno's reflection in the introduction to his
commentary on the Song of Songs, where he writes:
Astrologers, necromancers, chiromancers, and masters of pagan crafts have
rituals, rules, special places, incense, garments, and set times and prepara-
tions in order to receive those impure spiritual forces. These descend upon
those who manipulate them by means of the relation of those objects to those
forces, as the masters of these crafts know. So, too, there are activities, foods,
garments, preparations, and sacrifices, incense, and places and times that
enable one to receive and cleave to the pure spiritual forces that descend from
the world of the sefirot. These actions concern the esoteric knowledge of the
Torah and the particulars of the commandments, which cause Hebrew souls
to cleave to [the sefirah] Malkhut. Malkhut is the source of oral law, which
explains all the secrets of the Torah and details of the commandments. 42
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YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQ ALEMANNO
Magic and Kabbalah share a technique for causing the descent of spiritual
forces to earth. They differ, however, in their goals. The magician directs his
efforts at the stars, from which he hopes to receive beneficial emanation. The Jews
seek to receive, and cleave to, the emanations of the sefirot. In his Sefer Hesheq
Shlomo, Alemanno declares the descent of spiritual forces to be the principal goal
of the endeavors of King Solomon: "Both Solomon's good and his unseemly
actions indicate that his lifelong goal was to cause the descent of spiritual forces to
earth. He did all this by offering thousands and tens of thousands of sacrifices in
order to cause the Holy Spirit to descend upon him . . . and he made a great dwell-
ing for the Lord his God, in order to bring the Shekhinah [down] to earth." 43
Alemanno's words fell upon attentive ears, and other writers echoed his ideas.
For instance, a short treatise apparently written by R, Yitzhaq ben Yehi'el of Pisa,
whom Alemanno mentions in the introduction to his Shir ha-Ma'alot, expresses a
view about the purpose of the Temple similar to Alemanno's:
To cause a supernal power to descend and perform a certain action, one
must minister to that power by means of rituals proper to it. These rituals
prepare it [the power] to perform the desired action. . . . The greatest pro-
vidence concerns the perfection of the soul and its becoming divine. The
noblest service possible is that instructed by the Torah. For after He gave the
command concerning the Tabernacle, God said this: "And I shall dwell in
the midst of the Israelites" [Exodus 29:45]. That is to say, it is necessary to
safeguard the receptive power so that the supernal powers descend. For the
receptive power safeguards the relation [of the upper and lower worlds] by
means of particular garments, sacrifices, places, and actions, performed at
certain times. When one of those particulars is missing, the desired goal will
not be achieved. Moreover, harm will replace the hoped-for gain. 44
In fact, Alemanno proposes to see in the complex combination between theurgy
and magic a higher form of human activity, and, according to one of his notes, the last
topic to be studied after someone has accomplished his kabbalistic studies is magic. 45
4. Kabbalah and Astrology
As we have seen, magic is strongly connected to astrology, and both are connected
to Kabbalah. This nexus is evident in a long Commentary on the Ten Sefirot, authored
by Alemanno and found in his untitled treatise:
and the third [sphere] is that of Saturn . . . and it is a supreme and noble one,
higher than all the other planets, which is the reason that the ancient sages
said about it that it generated all the other planets. . . . And they say that
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YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQ ALEMANNO
Saturn is the true judge and the planet of Moses, peace be with him. 46 The
angel of Saturn is Michael, 47 the great minister, so called because of his great
power in divine matters, and he is the ministering angel of Israel. 48 And the
astrologers who have described Saturn say that it endows man with profound
thought, law, and the spiritual sciences [holdimot ruhaniyyot], 49 prophecy
[neuu'ah], 50 sorcery [kishshuf], 51 and prognostication and the Shemittot and
Yovelot. 52 The Jewish people and the Hebrew language and the Temple are
under its jurisdiction. Saturn's major conjunction is with Jupiter in the
dominion of Pisces" [and] occurs to assist the nation and the Torah and its
prophets. This planet endows the people with perfection in sciences and
divine matters such as the Torah and its commandments, out of its sublimity,
because it is spiritual. ... It is concerned only with thought, understanding
and design, esoteric knowledge and divine worship and His Torah, and the
Sabbath day is in its sway, because its nature causes material existence to
cease . . . and all the operations that do not correspond to it are forbidden
[during the Sabbath] , because it corrupts and destroys all [kinds of] destruc-
tions. And lightning [fire] should not be done under its aegis, because it is
cold. . . . And if they keep its spiritual rules and laws, it will impart a spiritual
influx abundantly. But if they do not keep the way of God, it will spit forth
everything that is bad: prophecy will occur to fools and to babies in an insuf-
ficient manner, and to women and to melancholies, 54 and to those possessed
by an evil spirit and maleficent demons that obliterate the limbs, 55 and bad
counsels and sorceries, and anxieties and erroneous beliefs. 56
This complex passage represents a Saturnization of Judaism, a development
that was inspired by views expressed in the writings of R. Abraham ibn Ezra and
his commentators — all well known to Alemanno — and even in the writings of
some Kabbalists. None of them, however, was so outspoken as Alemanno is in
this passage. The nexus between Saturn and the sefirah Binah points to an astro-
logical understanding of Kabbalah. But although there were some definitions of
Kabbalah at the end of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that integrated
the views of astromagic, and conceived it as creating a connection between the
supernal and the lower realms, 57 none of Alemanno's predecessors, among either
philosophers or Kabbalists, so explicitly pointed out the deep affinity between so
many central values in Judaism: the Torah, the Temple, the land of Israel, Moses,
prophecy, the Sabbath, and esoteric knowledge on the one hand; and Saturn on
the other. Though based on earlier medieval sources written in Spain by Jews,
Alemanno's passage is reminiscent of the importance attributed to Saturn by his
Florentine contemporaries, especially by Marsilio Ficino. 58
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YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQ ALEMANNO
Alemanno is one of the most outspoken representatives of what I call the
magical-talismanic model in Kabbalah, which had an impact on some forms of
Safedian Kabbalah and thus on eighteenth-century Hasidism. 59 Though well
aware of the ecstatic literature written by Abraham Abulafia, and the variants of
the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah as represented especially by Joseph Gikatilla
and Menahem Recanati, 60 Alemanno chose to give astromagical topics a much
greater place in the economy of his vision of Kabbalah.
To be sure: kabbalistic theosophy has not been identified with astrology, and
from the cosmic point of view the latter has been explicitly subordinated to the
former: the sefirot are conceived of as governing the planets. But even within the
terms of this clear hierarchy, a more static vision of the sefirot, understood in
Alemanno as instruments of the divine activity, is visible in his writings, so in this
respect he follows Recanati's instrumental theological approach. 61 But in his
combination of the variety of kabbalistic literatures and models with astrology,
magic, and alchemy, 62 Alemanno's writings come closest to occult phenomena in
later European esotericism. 63
5. A Conversation on Dignitas Hominis
Let me address now a nonkabbalistic issue, but one of great interest for the history
of Western thought. As I have attempted to show elsewhere, Alemanno embraced
a type of anthropology very close to Pico's. 64 Let me adduce a manuscript note
found in the Collectanea, which deals with question of the free will of man:
The greatest proof in existence of the fact that man has a free will [ba'al
behirah] is that all the creatures manifestly follow their aim [takhlitam] , deter-
mined for them by nature, and this is obvious in the case of the vegetables
and animals and the spheres, with the exception of man, who does not have,
by [his] nature, an aim to follow straightforwardly and constantly, without
changing [the path] . But every man has one aim, [chosen] by his free will,
and thereby the orders of man [Sidrei ha-'Adam] are different from [those of]
all the [other] creatures. 65
The assumption that nature regulates the behavior of all beings except man,
who chooses his aim freely, seems to coincide with the view of Pico that man does
not have a determined nature, but shapes himself. The human will is emphasized
here as the principle of the individuation of man in comparison to all other
creatures. However, this passage does not mention the transformation of man
into a different being as the result of his free choice, as Pico maintained.
Alemanno quotes this passage in the name of someone who told it to him, or,
more exactly, "from his mouth," mi-pi. Thus we are obliquely told that the person
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YOHANAN BEN YlTZHAQ ALEMANNO
was a contemporary of Alemanno and someone who had direct relations with
him. Unfortunately, the name of the person does not occur; instead there is an
acronym, HQYDL. These letters do not signify anything in Hebrew, so they require
decoding. I propose to decode them as follows: Q, for the word Conte; Y for the
name Yohanan, namely Giovanni; DL are difficult and may stand for a form of della
Mirandola. Although this proposal may seem rather strange, it perfectly conforms
to the way Alemanno wrote Pico's name in the introduction to his commentary on
the Song of Songs: ha-'Adon, 'Adoni Qonti Yo'ani Delamirandola. 66 The H of the acro-
nym apparently stands for ha-'Adon, and the continuous spelling of Delamirandola
accounts for the use of the letters DL.
On the basis of this suggestion, let us examine a Hebrew text, adduced by
Yohanan Alemanno in the name of an unidentified person, who is in my opinion
no other than Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: "The view of those who maintain
that out of God [the soul has appeared] involves the views of those who maintain
that it is God who is to be worshiped and to Him we should cleave, since it is pos-
sible that she [the soul] shall return to the source whence she was extracted, as it
is said: 'and the spirit shall return to the Lord who gave her' [Ecclesiastes 12:7].
And the other opinion involves all the other false opinions and the variety of idola-
try, because they think vain [things] that to Him she will not cleave but to one of
the spiritual forces, to whom it is possible to cleave. Understand this because it is
a wondrous [issue]." 67
This is a fine example of the exchange of ideas concerning one of the most
cherished concepts of the Renaissance. It is less important to point out now who
is the first source. What I see as more important is the concordance between
the authors, whose relations were not only a matter of reading common texts
but also of discussions on intellectual topics. The oral exchange is therefore an
important part of the scene of Jewish-Christian relations in Renaissance Florence.
Characteristic of this type of relationship is that the Jewish author mentions his
Christian interlocutor much more often than the Christian author mentions his
Jewish one. Although we may speak of a greater openness toward Jewish thought
in the Florentine Renaissance, its appropriation was hardly accompanied by
explicit acknowledgment of the personal contacts and the specific debts that
Christian authors owed to their teachers. 68
•igi-
15
JEWISH MYSTICAL THOUGHT IN
LORENZO IL MAGNIFICO'S FLORENCE
i. Patronage and Renaissances
Many of the important cultural centers and developments in medieval and pre-
modern times were shaped by political and social rulers who were concerned
about intellectual and spiritual matters. Without the considerable material invest-
ments of Frederick II in Naples and Alfonso Sabio in Toledo 1 in the thirteenth
century, Robert of Anjou in Naples in the fourteenth century, Cosimo and Lorenzo
de' Medici in Florence in the fifteenth century, and Rudolf II in Prague in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, European culture would be much
poorer. One of the main consequences of this intellectual court culture was that
the elite were attracted by the ruler's interest to his milieu or that of his small
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Jewish Mystical Thought in Florence
entourage, that they were the beneficiaries of a system of patronage involving both
power and money, and that as a result the culture produced in this environment
was typically elitist, and thus its intended audience and actual influence were very
restricted. The thought and other products of the few were intended for the few.
We shall explore the implications of this fact at the end of this chapter.
Many of the products connected with these rulers were translations — chiefly
from Arabic in the case of the first two, from Greek in the case of Lorenzo the
Magnificent, and in the other cases from both languages. Voluminous speculative
corpora, extant in Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew, were seen as potential sources of
inspiration. Jews played an important role as translators: in Naples, R. Jacob
Anatoli; 2 in Toledo, a considerable number of Jews; and in Florence, Flavius
Mithridates* and, to some extent, R. Elijah del Medigo. 4 In this role the Jews were
powerful intermediary figures, enabling their Christian patrons to learn about
older, and for them inaccessible, forms of thought. As the late professor Giuseppe
B. Sermoneta showed, 5 their translations opened the way for cultural renaissances
in several regions of Italy. Although Sicily remained a major site for converging
cultural encounters both in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, I want to
focus here on the existence of distinct forms of Jewish spirituality in Florence at
the end of the fifteenth century.
2. Sources of Florentine Jewish Speculative Literature
Translations were an important factor in the burgeoning of the Florentine
Renaissance. Two major corpora were translated in the entourage of Lorenzo de'
Medici: Greek Neoplatonic and Hermetic texts, and Hebrew kabbalistic treatises
and a few philosophical ones. Both corpora, though already known in a very frag-
mentary way by a few Christian thinkers, some of them converts from Judaism,
became increasingly influential because of their acceptance by seminal figures in
the Florentine court: Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. There
can be no doubt that the Hellenistic corpus translated by Ficino, and the kabbalis-
tic one translated by Mithridates — and to a lesser degree the material found in the
circle of Pico and Pier da Spoletto — are the most important sources for intellectual
developments in the writings of the late-fifteenth-century Florentine thinkers and
in Europe as a whole. Scholars dealing with Ficino's translations have long recog-
nized the contributions of the kabbalistic corpus and other occult and philosophi-
cal treatises, 6 and more recently the translations from Hebrew were analyzed in
detail by the late professor Chaim Wirszubski. 7 However, the Latin translations
from Hebrew by no means exhausted the range of Jewish writings available in the
Florentine milieu. There Jewish thinkers acted not only as translators but also as
mediators of texts, themes, and ideas that existed in earlier, untranslated writings.
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Jewish Mystical Thought in Florence
Oral discussions and the shared study of texts also provided vital opportunities for
the transmission of knowledge from one intellectual group to another. During
discussions the Jewish masters could transmit not only interesting passages or
disparate motifs but also more general views, based upon their written sources. In
the case of an individual like Yohanan Alemanno, who had access to a vast number
of medieval books, we may reasonably assume that he was able also to absorb their
content in just such a creative way, through fluid dialogical situations of common
study by Jewish and Christian intellectuals, just as Flavius Mithridates was able
to translate his kabbalistic Hebrew sources in a rather creative, though strongly
biased, manner. 8
3. Two Main Literary Corpora in Renaissance Florence
During the last third of the fifteenth century, Florence was the arena of speedy
appropriation of two huge speculative corpora, previously marginal to Western
Christian culture. One of these was the corpus of ancient Greek and Hellenistic
treatises translated by Marsilio Ficino from Greek into Latin, which were not only
translated but also immediately printed. By now we have not only Ficino's transla-
tions in print, but also most of his original sources. All these texts have been
studied in detail, and the picture of their speculative cargos is clear.
The other corpus consisted of translations into Latin of a large number of
kabbalistic treatises, achieved by Flavius Mithridates, a convert to Christianity, in
the mid-i48os. Mithridates' translations have never been printed, although most
of them are extant in manuscripts in several major libraries. Until Wirszubski
undertook the first detailed analysis of these manuscripts, their content was
largely unknown.
Thus, before the end of the 1480s an intellectual in Florence had access to a
variety of forms of thought previously inaccessible to Westerners. The first person
known to have taken advantage of this unique situation, and even to have been
instrumental in encouraging Mithridates' translations, was the young count of
Mirandola, Giovanni Pico. Enjoying good relations with both Ficino and
Mithridates, he not only enjoyed their literary output but also contributed his own
views, based upon a variety of syntheses of ideas found in these two voluminous
corpora.
Several sources allow us to construct a more detailed literary inventory of Jewish
speculative texts available in Florence.
[a] A letter from R. Elijah del Medigo to Pico, which includes a list of
kabbalistic books, with their titles in Hebrew. 5 Del Medigo's writings
in both Hebrew and Latin also constitute a comprehensive source about
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Jewish Mystical Thought in Florence
the extent of knowledge of Kabbalah at the end of the fifteenth century
in Italy.
[b] The voluminous writings of R. Yohanan Alemanno, another compan-
ion of Pico, which abound in quotations from hundreds of medieval
sources, most of them written in Hebrew, and only very few of them
unknown from Hebrew sources. 10 In some cases Pico seems to have
quoted from Hebrew books already known to Alemanno and also
quoted by him, but not translated into Latin."
[c] The writings of R. Abraham Farissol, who stayed for a while in Florence
and was acquainted with a large number of Jewish books; 12 and the epis-
tles of R. Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim, a Spanish Kabbalist who corresponded
with R. Yitzhaq of Pisa and apparently also visited him in Florence.
Another Jewish writer, active in Florence in the middle of the fifteenth
century, was R. Moshe ben Yoav. His writings, which have already
attracted the attention of Umberto Cassuto, 13 remain available only in
manuscript and at the margin of modern scholarship.
[d] The large corpus of kabbalistic writings translated by Flavius
Mithridates into Latin and compiled by Wirszubski. 14 Although some of
the manuscripts he translated may reflect the intensive interest in
Kabbalah while he was still living as a Jew in Sicily, it seems possible
and even likely that when converting to Christianity in Rome, he brought
with him Hebrew manuscripts from Sicily. It is also possible that the
manuscripts he translated from Hebrew in Florence were already
available in that city. In any case, his Latin translations should be
enumerated among the kabbalistic books that were extant in Florence,
whatever the precise provenance of the original Hebrew manuscript.
[e] Hebrew manuscripts copied in Florence in the mid-fifteenth century
and still available in Florentine libraries, as well as manuscripts copied
in Florence but now held elsewhere. 15
4. A Variety of Jewish Spiritual Traditions in
Laurentian Florence
Rather than compiling a list of titles of books available in Florence, which any
reader of Hebrew manuscripts can do, I want to distinguish among three forms of
spirituality found in distinct literary corpora that had a deep influence on at least
some scholars in Florence: various versions of Jewish Kabbalah, the literature of
Hasidei Ashkenaz, and two major books of Arabic provenance that should be
located on the vague boundary between Neoplatonism and mysticism. Though
different in essence from the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah of Spanish
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Jewish Mystical Thought in Florence
origins, the specific form of Muslim spirituality presented in the books described
in the next chapter has some affinities to a form of Kabbalah well known in Italy,
the ecstatic one. 16 Both types of lore, the ecstatic Kabbalah and the two Arabic
books, operated within similar Neo-Aristotelian universes in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, and in both the role of some mystical elements is evident;
both exemplify versions of what can be called "rationalist mysticism." 17 Both
forms of spirituality were present separately in Florence among some Jews in the
1480s. Last but not least: it is in the circle of the Jewish authors in this city that a
medieval treatise, having much in common with the Neoplatonic and linguistic
magic of Kabbalah, attributed to Apollonius, and translated from Latin into
Hebrew, is mentioned for the first time. 18
Beginning in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, a significant change is
discernible in the circle of these masters. R. David Messer Leon, who mentioned
that his father had warned him not to study Kabbalah, was nevertheless attracted
by this lore, which played an important role in his writings. 19 This is also the case
in the writings of R. Yohanan Alemanno, a former student of R. Yehudah Messer
Leon, 20 and in a commentary on the ten sefirot by R. Abraham de Balmes. Both
Alemanno and, to a lesser degree, David Messer Leon also became interested in
"natural magic," a lore that did not attract the attention of their older Jewish con-
temporaries in Italy. This shift is consonant with the new ambiance dominant
among some of the Christian intellectuals in Florence. Neoplatonic and Hermetic
magic and, in the case of Pico, also Kabbalah moved from the obscure fringes to
the full light, together with a significant strengthening of Neoplatonism, which
came to rival Aristotelianism in significance. Thus we see a significant parallel
between Jewish and Christian intellectuals, active in precisely the same period and
in the same geographical area.
However, whereas for the Christian intellectuals kabbalistic, magical, and
Neoplatonic ideas were relatively novel, stemming as they did mainly from newly
translated corpora of writings, for the Jews Kabbalah had already become part of
the curriculum of Jewish texts studied by many prior authorities. Magic, or in
many cases we should better say the theory of magic that they accepted was already
found in medieval Hebrew texts, although its ultimate origins were Arabic or even
Greek. This was also the case with regard to many of the Neoplatonic motifs. It
was in this period that Solomon ibn Gabirol, known to the Christian scholars as
Avicebron, was quoted again and again by several Jewish thinkers. Thus, although
the direction of the changes in the Jewish and Christian circles was very similar,
different types of sources fueled it. If for the Christians we may speak about a
Renaissance in the fuller sense of the word, namely the return of a mode of thought
that had been largely forgotten in European culture and religiosity for many
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Jewish Mystical Thought in Florence
centuries, in the case of the Jewish authors we see an oscillation between a mar-
ginal role for elitist magic in some sources and its centrality in others. However,
the basic question is what induced the new form of writings among the Jews. It is
obvious that Ficino's enterprise, a major factor in the emergence of the spiritual
physiognomy of the Christian Renaissance, significantly predates similar develop-
ments among the Jews.
Even so, the sources that attracted the greatest interest of contemporary Jews in
occult issues were Judaeo-Arabic texts. The Jewish authors did not explain this
parallel shift, and I wonder whether in fact they were aware of this shift. How
should we explain this concomitance? Did the Florentine ambiance prompt some
Jewish intellectuals to look for counterparts to the Christian Renaissance in their
own tradition? This explanation, however, seems to me to explain only marginal
phenomena. So, for example, the fascination with Jewish mysticism, almost
totally absent in Ficino but on the other hand so vibrant in Pico beginning in the
mid-i48os, can hardly explain the parallel interest in this lore among the younger
generation of Jewish intellectuals. The interesting question is why the Greek and
Hellenistic corpora translated by Ficino, which resonate so strongly with medieval
Jewish material, left so few traces even among Jewish authors who embraced
magic as a worthwhile worldview. In fact, at least part of Giovanni Pico's fascina-
tion with magic was induced by the subtle changes introduced by Flavius
Mithridates' calculated mistranslations into the texture of the kabbalistic texts.
The fact that the magical interpretation of Kabbalah surfaced at the same time in
the Latin translations by Mithridates and in Alemanno's writings on the one
hand, and the interest in magic in the corpus of Neoplatonic and Hermetic
writings translated by Ficino and rendered in his own books on the other hand,
is an interesting quandary of intellectual history. The fact that Ficino translated
the Greek texts cannot explain, alone, why the ideas contained in these texts
immediately became so attractive. What is so fascinating in this dual turn to
elite magic is not the possibility of mutual influences, which would have
been natural in the case of authors who certainly were aware of each other,
and were eventually even acquainted with the content of each other's writings, but
the possibility of a parallelism that may be described as reciprocal osmosis. If
there was an influence, the agents of its transmission have not quoted the
similar books that predisposed different authors toward similar ideas; I would
speculate that an imponderable esprit du siecle, a Zeitgeist, invited similar
speculative tendencies.
But time alone is not the only significant factor explaining this strange but
powerful development. Outside northern Italy it would have been very difficult
to detect a similar development concerning Kabbalah among either Jews or
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Jewish Mystical Thought in Florence
Christians. Although a proclivity toward magic was conspicuous in an important
circle of Spanish Kabbalists during the 1470s, 21 it took a totally different direction.
Unlike the magia naturalis, accepted by Ficino, Pico, Alemanno, and to a lesser
degree David Messer Leon, the group of Kabbalists in Spain cultivated a violent,
demonic form of magical Kabbalah intended to destroy the prevailing historical
and religious order, including Christianity, for the sake of bringing the Messiah. It
was a redemptive rather than a natural magic, focused upon solving historical
rather than personal problems."
There were four main ways in which Kabbalah was understood by Jews, Spanish
and Italian, at the time of the Renaissance in Florence: the particularist approach
of the Spanish Kabbalists, the Neoplatonic approach, the magical or Hermetic
one, and the Aristotelian one. Since the Neoplatonic and magical interpretations
of Kabbalah have already been surveyed in the previous chapter, I want to focus
here on the particularist stand of the Spaniards versus the more universalist stand
of the Italian Jews, as represented here by the rather neglected Aristotelian inter-
pretation of Kabbalah.
Spanish Particularism
Sometime at the end of the 1480s or the very beginning of the 1490s, a Spanish
Kabbalist named R. Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim was active in Italy. 23 From his pen only
two epistles survive, both addressed to R. Yitzhaq da Pisa, an inhabitant of
Florence. The letters deal with one of the classic kabbalistic issues, namely the
nature of the ten sefirot. From their wording it is clear that the writer was
acquainted with the addressee, and that he was aware of the spiritual ambiance of
the latter's circle. Mor Hayyim advises R. Yitzhaq to pursue his special attitude
toward Kabbalah, namely that this lore should not be interpreted by means of
rational concepts, unlike a certain R Yohanan, whose approach seems to be dif-
ferent. There is good reason to identify this Yohanan with the mentor of R Yitzhaq
da Pisa, Yohanan Alemanno, whose intellectual approach to Kabbalah was pre-
cisely the opposite of the particularist attitude of the Spanish Kabbalist. It should
be mentioned that the case of Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim is not exceptional; some few
years later, in the mid-i490s, another Spanish Kabbalist who had arrived in north-
ern Italy, R. Yehudah Hayyat, expressed particularist attitudes, apparently also in
reaction to Alemanno's thought, and perhaps also to other, unspecified Jewish
Italian intellectuals. 24
Kabbalah and Aristotelianism
Although the Florentine Renaissance is better known for its Neoplatonic propen-
sities, we should remember that Aristotle was never deserted by either Pico della
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Jewish Mystical Thought in Florence
Mirandola or Yohanan Alemanno. Nor was Aristotelianism disapproved of in
Florence in general. 25 Indeed, although the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah
adopted some important Neoplatonic views, 26 Aristotelian elements were vital in
the form of Kabbalah that was known especially in Italy: the ecstatic Kabbalah. An
adept of Maimonides, Abraham Abulafia had integrated significant Aristotelian
elements into his metaphysics, physics, and psychology. And in some other cases,
such as the early writings of R Joseph Gikatilla, the Aristotelian worldview was
accepted, despite critiques of some of the concepts of this philosophical system.
Both Alemanno and Pico were well acquainted with writings belonging to ecstatic
Kabbalah, and quoted often from Abulafia's books. 27 David Messer Leon and
Abraham de Balmes also incorporated Aristotelian elements into their kabbalistic
discussions. Therefore, at least for an Italian thinker during the Renaissance,
Kabbalah could be understood, and in fact indeed was understood, in the context
of both Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophy. A large-scale examination of
the issues related to the various Aristotelian-kabbalistic syntheses during the
Renaissance is beyond our scope here. For our present purpose, it will suffice to
consider how two scholars who were in contact with Pico — Yohanan Alemanno
and Elijah del Medigo — dealt with the issue. The passages discussed below seem
to reflect attitudes original with these two authors rather than a repetition of
Abulafian Kabbalah.
In Alemanno's writings we can discern two different attitudes to the relation
between medieval Aristotelianism and Kabbalah. The first one incorporates a
hierarchical approach, the second a hermeneutical one. In Alemanno's hierarchy
of knowledge, Aristotelianism sometimes occupies a lower place, but it is never-
theless treated positively, in contrast to Pico, whose main project was to attenuate
or even bridge the chasm between Aristotle and Plato. 28 Alemanno's main strategy
is to organize the different forms of knowledge, philosophical, mystical, and
magical, within a comprehensive hierarchical scheme. He is interested, for exam-
ple, in the mystical implications of Averroism, conceived of as allowing the union
between the human and the Agent Intellect, the latter being lowest among ten
separate, spiritual and cosmic, intellects. Immediately after mentioning this
spiritual achievement, Alemanno characterizes the Kabbalah of R. Isaac ibn Latif
and that of Abraham Abulafia as higher, since they allow the union of the
human spiritual faculties with higher entities than the Agent Intellect. 29 Thus
Alemanno presents not a flat, horizontal correspondence between Kabbalah and
Aristotelianism, a la Pico, but an attempt to construe its elements in structural
terms. He sees Averroes, the most orthodox of the medieval Aristotelians, who at
the same time allowed for the possibility of the epistemic union of the human with
the Agent Intellect, as offering a metaphysics and an epistemology that may
•ig 9 -
Jewish Mystical Thought in Florence
contain some mystical elements but allows only for the adhesion of the human
intellect to a relatively lower ontological being in the worlds of separate intellects.
The Jewish Kabbalists, who immediately follow Averroes in Alemanno's hierar-
chical organization of knowledge, are presented as able to achieve higher spiritual
attainments. Therefore, Averroism is not Kabbalah, but it can be used as a means
to the higher, spiritual attainment that is the prerogative of Kabbalah. Alemanno's
strategy is an example of distinction hierarchise' 30 between the two lores, both valid
in themselves, though operating on various ontological levels, and inspired by
different metaphysical assumptions. 31
In other cases, Alemanno uses Averroistic views in order to explain kabbalistic
issues. Let me adduce one example. A classical kabbalistic problem is the nature of
the relation between the Infinite, or 'Ein Serf, and the ten sefirot. In some kabbalistic
texts, known in Italy in the 1480s and early 1490s, namely during the creative period
of both Alemanno and Pico, the assumption was that the Infinite was identical with
the first sefirah, Keter. Other texts, however, assumed that although the Infinite
transcended the sefirotic realm, the latter realm was nevertheless divine, and there-
fore the divinity consisted in both the Infinite and the ten sefirot. 32 In other words,
no essential difference between the two constituents of the divine world was
assumed. Alemanno, who was acquainted with these views, adopted a third one,
from earlier sources, with some modifications: the realm of the sefirot should not
be conceived of as divine, and a sharp demarcation should be drawn between the
Infinite, which alone was to be conceived of as divine, and the sefirotic realm. For
Alemanno, the crucial question was how to explain the emergence of multiplicity
from unity, of the finite from the Infinite. He enumerated the Kabbalists who had
adopted this theological view distinguishing between the sefirot and the divinity,
and decided that they constituted the majority, and therefore that their views should
be accepted. However, he was concerned with offering an explanation that could be
defended intellectually. To do so, he resorted to two Aristotelian books:
The sefirot are emanated [entities] , while He, blessed be He, is the Emanator;
they are numbers, 33 but they do not transcend the [category of] number. 34
Thus the words of R. Shimeon bar Yohai should be understood and inter-
preted, insofar as Keter [is concerned], together with all the sefirot. He has
announced the mystery of unity, because they are, from one perspective,
one, and from other perspectives many, as it is the truth for those who are
initiated. 35 And this is obvious to reason, as [revealed] in the book The Quality
of the Adherence 36 and in The Incoherence of the Incoherence, 37 [to be read in order]
to understand this issue, despite the difficulty of realizing it at the beginning
of study. 38
Jewish Mystical Thought in Florence
Indeed, in Ibn Tufail's book, as adduced elsewhere by Alemanno, we read as
follows: "It is not correct to say about the separate intellects either that they are
many or that they are one, neither that they are [identical with] Him nor that they
are separate from Him." 35 This is precisely Alemanno's view of the sefirot and
their relation with the Infinite. This is a very interesting example of how an Italian
Kabbalist interpreted — in fact misinterpreted — the classical book of Spanish
Kabbalah, the Zohar, by resorting to views dominant in Arab Muslim philosophy.
Implicit in Alemanno is a much more open approach to the nature of Kabbalah: it
is not only the patrimony of some few initiates, but it is possible to decode it by
means of alien forms of wisdom. Alemanno's Kabbalah is, in fact, though not
always in his rhetoric, an exoteric lore, one that may be understood by reading
concepts found in books, without resorting to oral traditions. Alemanno's recur-
ring reliance on Ibn Tufail and Averroes shows that a Renaissance thinker might
accept Aristotelianism, even in its Averroistic formulation, and at the same time
have an explicit and totally positive attitude toward Kabbalah.
i6
OTHER MYSTICAL AND MAGICAL
LITERATURES IN RENAISSANCE
FLORENCE
i. Heikhalot Literature and Hasidei Ashkenaz
Although all three main kabbalistic models, the ecstatic, the theosophical-
theurgical, and the magical, were well represented in kabbalistic literatures
available in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century, the spectrum of Jewish
texts dealing with mystical topics was much more variegated. In addition to these
literatures, there were extensive writings concerned with two other forms of
spirituality. Their impact may have been less profound than that exercised by
kabbalistic literature, but nevertheless they should not be ignored.
The earliest form of Jewish mystical literature, the so-called Heikhalot literature
stemming from late antiquity, had been preserved mostly by the Ashkenazi Pietists. 1
Other Mystical Literatures in Florence
Some of the few manuscripts containing this literature were copied in Italy. 2 In fact,
the impact of this literature can be detected very early on Italian soil, long before the
arrival of Kabbalah. 3 In Renaissance Florence several of the main treatises of
Heikhalot literature are well represented in R. Yohanan Alemanno's writings. 4
Another form of medieval Jewish mysticism, which was relatively widespread in
Laurentian Florence, was that of Hasidei Ashkenaz. This form of mysticism had
flourished in the Rhineland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in some small
circles of pious Jews, who produced a considerable body of writings consisting of
numerology, descriptions of various hermeneutical devices, exegetical tracts, theo-
logical and theosophical speculations, psychological discussions including mystical
techniques, magical practices such as creations of the Golem, 5 and treatments of the
nature of the divine names. 6 This literature expanded to Spain and Italy in the second
third of the thirteenth century, although its impact there was smaller than in
Germany, 7 and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries its influence declined drasti-
cally throughout Europe. Nevertheless, these writings are represented both in
Flavius Mithridates' translations into Latin and in Alemanno's writings.
This recurrence again raises the question whether Mithridates brought his
original Hebrew texts from Sicily or found them in northern Italy. In my opinion
the latter alternative is more plausible. Unlike Sicily, northern Italy was an area
deeply influenced by Ashkenazi culture, which flourished in the second half of
the fifteenth century. 8 Though born in Mantua, Alemanno himself was, as his
name demonstrates, of Ashkenazi origins. What are the Ashkenazi books that
were known to the Florentine authors in the 1480s?
[a] Mithridates translated Rabbi Eleazar of Worms's book Hokhmat ha-Nefesh,
under the title Liber de Anima, 5 and a treatise attributed to a student of
Rabbi Eleazar, Keter Shem Tou, under the title Corona Nominis Boni. 10
[b] Yohanan Alemanno quotes in his various writings several Ashkenazi
works, most notably Rabbi Eleazar's Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah" and
Sefer Hasidim. 12
[c] Alemanno quotes a tract titled Beraita' de-Yosef ben 'Uzziel, a work that is
part of the corpus designated by modern scholars as the "circle of the
special cherubim." 13
The texts enumerated above, and many others that cannot be adduced within
the framework of this survey, show that Alemanno was well acquainted with
most of the Jewish mystical writings stemming from medieval Spain, Italy, and
Germany, and also with much earlier Jewish mystical sources, which belong to the
Heikhalot literature. 14 With the major exception of the Zohar, with which Alemanno
was only poorly acquainted, he had access to a very impressive array of mystical
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texts. Indeed, when we also take into account Ficino's translations, demonstrating
acquaintance with the most important Greek and Hellenistic speculative writings,
Florence in the period of Lorenzo de' Medici can be regarded as the place where
the most extensive Jewish and Greek corpora were found. We must also take note
of the importance of Arab culture, in this case mediated by Flavius Mithridates'
knowledge of Arabic and Alemanno's fascination with two Arabic books. Although
Florence cannot be compared to tenth-century Baghdad or to thirteenth-century
Toledo, the sites of significant encounters among the three major monotheistic
cultures, this city should be granted at least third place in importance. Although
the acquaintance of Florentine figures with Arab culture is too large a subject to be
dealt with here — and Mithridates' teaching of Arabic to Pico has already been dealt
with by Wirszubski — we should take note of two Arabic treatises that attracted the
attention of Alemanno.
2. Muslim Philosophical Spirituality in Jewish Garbs
Two works by Muslim philosophers invite special consideration, because although
they were not translated into any European language before the end of the fifteenth
century, they exercised a strong influence on Alemanno's thought: Abu Bakr
ibn Tufayl's Hayy bin Yoqtan (The Living Son of the Awakened) and Ibn al-SId
al-Bataliyusi's Kitab al-Hada'iq, also known as The Book of the Imaginary Circles. Both
texts had been translated into Hebrew and were widely quoted by medieval and
Renaissance Jewish writers.
The profound influence of Ibn Tufayl's classic on Jewish thought and mysticism
still awaits a detailed analysis. Since its emergence in Spain in a Hebrew transla-
tion, together with the commentary of Rabbi Moshe Narboni, in the mid-fourteenth
century, many leading Jewish thinkers were substantially influenced by this trea-
tise. 15 Besides Narboni, the influence of the book is visible in the writings of Joseph
ben Shem Tov, 16 Abraham Bibago, 17 Isaac Abravanel, 18 Yohanan Alemanno, and
David Messer Leon. 15 What appealed to these thinkers was the work's unusual
combination of philosophy and mysticism. The ascending movement of the mind
from specific objects to intellectual abstractions, basically an Aristotelian approach,
was complemented, and sometimes conceived as transcended, by mystical move-
ment, which was described in more Platonic and unitary terms. 20 For thinkers in the
late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, the work demonstrated that while
remaining faithful to philosophy it was possible to find a way to transcend it.
Although this attitude exerted little appeal in Spain in the fifteenth century, it struck
a sympathetic chord among Renaissance figures in Italy.
Alemanno's opus was deeply influenced by Ibn Tufayl; he compared the differ-
ence between this Arabic thinker and the other philosophers to that between
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Moses and the other prophets. 21 A document printed by Umberto Cassuto attests
that Hayy bin Yoqtan was a book very dear to Alemanno, 22 who wrote some interest-
ing glosses on it; 23 and it appears that Alemanno's son, Yitzhaq, shared its con-
tents with Giovanni Pico's nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola. 24
Here, then, we have evidence of the independent evolution of Jewish thought, and
also of its active influence in the Christian Renaissance. Ibn Tufayl's work, with its
complex forms of spirituality, served as an immediate and powerful catalyst for
the emergence of new forms of Jewish spirituality. 25 The assumption permeating
Ibn Tufayl's book is that it is possible to arrive at the highest intellectual and
mystical experience through a natural process, which starts with independent
contemplation of nature and culminates with total immersion in the divine
realm. 26 This autodidactic approach seems consonant with the concept of the
development of human nature in the writings of some Renaissance figures. 27
As I have attempted to show in some earlier studies, another Muslim book, the
Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean treatise known as The Book of the Imaginary Circles,
influenced Alemanno and Pico in Florence, as well as Rabbi Isaac Abravanel and
Leone Ebreo's Dialo^hi d'Amore. 28 It seems to me that some major topics, such as
Pico's concept of the dignity of man 29 and some aspects of his view of nature,'
were informed by views found in Al-Bataliyusi's tract, apparently by the mediation
of Yohanan Alemanno, who was very fond of this work. In the case of the two
Abravanels, The Imaginary Circles significantly affected their cosmic hierarchies,
described by means of the image of a circle.' 1 Both Alemanno and Isaac Abravanel
quoted long passages verbatim from this book. Although Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola and Leone Ebreo never explicitly quoted from it, several significant
similarities between views found in Al-Batalyusi's text and in the works of these
two most formative figures of the Italian Renaissance offer possible connections
that may be a fertile field for investigation. 32
The exceptional influence of these two Arabic books on one Jewish thinker,
namely Alemanno, may be only idiosyncratic. However, it is still a fact that
Alemanno served as a conduit of such types of spirituality to Christian intellectu-
als. Alemanno's deep concern with the philosophically oriented spirituality stem-
ming from Islam and his speculative interpretation of Kabbalah found their way
into the more general understanding of this mystical Jewish lore in Christian texts,
as exemplified by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Johann Reuchlin.
"Apollonius' " Sefer Melekhet ha-Muskkelet
Ficino's Latin translations from Greek were the main avenue for the transmission
of Hellenistic philosophy, magic, and mysticism into Renaissance thought.
Medieval Neoplatonic and Hermetic ideas also contributed in a minor way to this
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transmission, 33 as did some Jewish sources. 34 Here, however, I want to deal not
with themes and ideas but with a whole book translated into Hebrew which
brings together magic and linguistic combinatory practices, and which is extant,
in a very fragmentary manner, only in the writings of Yohanan Alemanno and his
circle. Alemanno describes a very large book, some 300 pages long, named
Melekhet ha-Muskkelet, attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, which had been translated
from Latin into Hebrew a century earlier in Provence by a certain Shelomo ben
Nathan Orgieri. 35 Some long quotations from this work are to be found in
Alemanno's writings, and excerpts from it survive in a manuscript produced by a
copyist employed by the Florentine family da Pisa, to which Alemanno was very
close. 36 The magical content of the book is reminiscent of the Golden Flowers, also
attributed to Apollonius, and indeed it was known to Christian magicians in the
fourteenth century. King Solomon plays a major role in the book, as well as com-
binations of letters, resembling what we find in Kabbalah.
Picatrix
One of the most influential books in the domain of magic, Takhlit-he-Hakliam
(The Aim of the Sage) is known in the West by the title of its thirteenth-century
Latin translation, made in Castile, Picatrix. Scholars have already documented the
profound influence of this book on Renaissance magic. 37 Alemanno mentions the
work as one of the books on magic that must be perused by anyone who wishes to
attain perfection. 38 Here I want to clarify the Italian contexts of the two Hebrew
translations of this treatise from Arabic, both of which constitute abridgments of
the larger work. 35
[a] The most important abridgment was made from the Arabic version and
survives in two manuscripts under the title Takhlit he-Hakham. 40 Both
manuscripts, Ms. Munich 214, folios 46a-ioib, and Ms. London, Brit-
ish Library Or. 9861, folios ia-38b, were copied in Italy at the end of the
fifteenth century.
[b] A fragment of the second abridgment of Picatrix is preserved in two man-
uscripts that were part of the same codex, Ms. New York, JTS 2470 (ENA
2439), folios ia-iob, and Ms. New York, JTS 2465 (ENA 1920), folios
ia-5a. These two manuscripts were also copied in Italy. On folio 10a in
the first manuscript we read: "This book was translated from Aramaic
into Arabic and from Arabic into Hebrew, but this translation is not the
first Hebrew translation. From Hebrew it was translated into Latin and
from Latin this translation was made, praise to God." At the end of the
second manuscript we find: "The translation of the first chapter of the
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Other Mystical Literatures in Florence
book Ghayat al-Hakim has been completed, thank God, and was trans-
lated from a Christian translation, most of which is incorrect, as their
translation is in no way clear." These references to a translation from
Latin (la'az) seem to point to the Renaissance period. In any case, the
Hebrew translation was made after the first Arabic translation and cer-
tainly after the Latin one, whose date is unknown,
[c] A small portion of the Hebrew text of Picatrix has been preserved in
Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1352 (Mic. 228), folio 177a. Adolph Neubauer
published part of it in his catalogue of Oxford manuscripts. This
manuscript, too, was produced in Italy.
Thus three Hebrew translations of Picatrix survive in Italian manuscripts written
at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. At the same
time the Latin translation of Picatrix was widely disseminated among scholars of
the Renaissance. R. Yohanan Alemanno, who was involved in intellectual activities
of the type pursued at the academy in Florence, was one of the few to mention the
Hebrew version of Picatrix. In this case, as in others, Alemanno continued develop-
ments in matters of magic that took place in late-thirteenth-century Spain in
Jewish culture, which were also consonant with the intellectual concerns of
Florentine intellectuals like Giovanni Pico and Ficino.
Sefer Raziel
Another Hebrew work on magic that enjoyed widespread distribution among
Christians in Renaissance Florence is the anonymous Sefer Raziel. This composition
differs in many respects from the better-known Sefer Raziel ha-Malaldi. Frangois
Secret has given a detailed description of the content of Sefer Raziel, and I will
supplement his remarks by reference to the Hebrew translation, which was
unknown to him. 41 The Hebrew version is found in two manuscripts, the more
complete of which is New York, JTS 8117, folios 59-100. A large fragment survives
in an inferior version in Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1959, folios g8b-i3ib. This
translation was also made in Italy:
In the name of the God of Israel, I shall begin to copy Sefer Raziel. Pay close
attention and know that I found this book in two versions, the first in
Hebrew and the second in Latin. The names of angels and intelligences are
different in each work, but in practical terms there is no difference in any
respect. Since no one who practices may succeed in any of these actions
without knowing this book, I have chosen to copy it, using each one of the
names of the intelligences, so that the practitioner will not have to consult
other books, which have no value whatsoever. 42
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Other Mystical Literatures in Florence
The translator's remarks bear close examination. It would seem that the
translator had before him two identical compositions whose textual variation
concerned only the names of angels. Comparison of this composition as found in
Ms. New York, JTS 8117, with parts of the translations quoted by Secret indicates
that the Hebrew work was an actual translation and not merely an integration of
different versions already existing in Hebrew.
3. Between External Influence and Internal Restructuring
The three Jewish thinkers who were connected to Florence, Moshe ben Yoav, Elijah
del Medigo, and Yohanan Alemanno, the last two of whom were related direcdy to
Pico, exemplify the various forms of the attachment of the Jewish intelligentsia to
their medieval legacy, and the dominant role of Arabic philosophy, including
mystical philosophy, in the very heart of the Italian Renaissance. The intellectual
traits echoing the Italian Renaissance that can be found in the writings of Jewish
inhabitants of Florence, most notably in Alemanno's books, seem to reflect a
restructuring of already existing themes and ideas. Instead of outright innovation
or unquestioning acceptance of the views characteristic of their Christian contem-
poraries, we find a web of various emphases, a restructuring of ways of reading
some texts, and combinations of lores that had previously been regarded as unre-
lated. The precise role of the new ideas aired by Christian Italian intellectuals in the
economy of Jewish thought is a matter that cannot be answered easily, but there
can be no doubt that close relations existed between the intellectuals belonging to
the two religions.
One of the reasons for the relatively smooth shift from Jewish medieval to
Jewish Renaissance thought is that some types of thinking and action were
accepted in some circles of medieval Judaism but not in Christianity. Their emer-
gence in the latter constituted a novelty, which created tensions. The centrality of
Ficino's and Mithridates' translations to the transformation that generated the
Christian Renaissance cannot be compared to the relatively better acquaintance of
Jews in the Middle Ages with ideas found in the Neoplatonic-Hermetic corpus, and
the mastery of the kabbalistic literature by some of them during the Renaissance.
For many of the Jews the kabbalistic, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic ideas were much
less a novelty than for Christians. Moreover, an opening up among some Jewish
intellectuals toward the Christian philosophical culture, less evident among their
Christian contemporaries, can be discerned during the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries. For example, Italian Jews drew upon scholastic writings as
well as Arabic philosophical writings; long quotations from Thomas Aquinas and
Egidio Romano can be found in the writings of Hillel of Verona and of Yehudah
and Immanuel Romano. 43 In addition, many Jewish writers approached the role of
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Other Mystical Literatures in Florence
magic much more positively than did Christian medieval and early Renaissance
writers. 44 Thus Alemanno could rely upon his medieval predecessors, whereas for
Ficino or Giovanni Pico the adoption of natural magic from Hellenistic pagan
sources or from some forms of Jewish Kabbalah constituted a much more
dramatic departure, which provoked some strong reactions from ecclesiastical
circles. Likewise, the role of external action, namely of the complex Jewish ritual,
which was consonant with the importance attributed in magic to external acts,
seemed to be greater in Judaism than in Christianity. 45 The complex system of
commandments, interpreted in some few texts either theurgically or magically,
created for the elite Jews the assumption that human acts were of paramount
importance, since they were able to influence extrahuman realms. This anthropo-
logical approach was more consonant with Neoplatonic and Hermetic magic than
with medieval scholasticism's view of the human condition.
Last but not least: the Neoplatonism of Alemanno is almost entirely of Jewish
and Arab provenance, and it was only marginally influenced by Ficino's trans-
lations. 46 Thus, once again, it was possible to shift more easily from the strongly
Aristotelian-oriented Jewish philosophy to a more Neoplatonic one, on the basis
of already existing material. The important question, however, is what prompted
this shift. Did it reflect a development within Jewish thought that only incidentally
bore some resemblances to similar phenomena in Christian circles in Florence? Or
should we invoke again the imponderable principle of osmosis in order to allow
for a much more open and reciprocal relationship between Jewish and Christian
intellectuals? Were the principles of the organization of knowledge among the
Jews affected by the changes taking place in the overwhelmingly Christian
Florentine intellectual circles? Our existing state of knowledge makes it difficult to
answer this question in a detailed and conclusive way. Much more research will be
needed before we can offer a detailed picture of the relations between the Jewish
and Christian intellectual elites. Meanwhile, however, Stephane Toussaint has
recently established that Ficino appropriated two passages from the Judaeo-Arabic
culture, one from Hayy bin Yoqtan and another, dealing with astromagic, from
R Samuel ibn Zarza, with whose writings Alemanno was well acquainted. 47
This acquaintance merely demonstrates the complexity of the situation: scholars
in Florence presumably exchanged relevant information, and this reciprocity
should be taken into account when analyzing the development of both Florentine
intellectual milieus.
4. Eclecticism as a Symptom of Elitism
If we compare Alemanno's voluminous writings with those produced in Toledo in
the last decades of the thirteenth century, or those of R Yehudah Loew, known as
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the Maharal, in Prague in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, one
major difference is obvious. The Zohar, Gikatilla's classical work on Kabbalah
produced in thirteenth-century Castile, was composed as an organic discourse
and did not include quotations from many and variegated speculative sources.
In contrast, Alemanno's strong eclecticism, which is reminiscent of that of Ficino
and Pico della Mirandola, seems to be a hallmark of this circle in Florence.
Alemanno's attempt to offer a comprehensive hierarchy and Pico's attempt to
produce a concordance among the different systems are more representative of
this epoch, when the surfacing of new corpora was a determinative development.
However, whereas Alemanno's very learned books remained at the margin of
subsequent Jewish thought as a whole, the Zohar and the writings of Maharal
became part and parcel of Jewish religion and culture. It was not the content of
the ideas presented by Alemanno that prevented his thought from being
absorbed by later generations, but rather the way in which they were expressed.
The Jewish community was looking for a clear-cut message, not for attempts to
offer a synthesis or a hierarchical view of knowledge. Rabbi Moshe Cordovero's
similar amalgam of magic, theosophy, and ecstatic Kabbalah during the
mid-sixteenth century had a great success, becoming one of the major sources for
eighteenth-century Hasidism. The eclectic nature of Renaissance discourse
and its tendency to deal with comprehensive pictures of the world were concerned
more with breadth of knowledge than with presenting a coherent and consistent
religious way of life. The writings produced by intellectual virtuosi such as
Alemanno and his Christian contemporaries were directed at impressing their few
colleagues rather than at shaping the lives of masses of people. Although
Alemanno was more concerned with his religious community than Giovanni Pico
was, its welfare was not the main target of his thought or the major topic of his
writings.
It was only when Jewish masters, especially some masters in sixteenth-century
Safed, started to open their writings to wider consumption by adopting an inten-
tionally less eclectic and pompous style that the syntheses between Kabbalah and
magic spread beyond tiny circles of Jewish literati. Thus we can trace the move-
ment from the elitist eclecticism of Alemanno and David Messer Leon to the more
accessible style of Isaac Luria and many of his followers, from the style of
Renaissance eclecticism to the style of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Thus
modern Hasidism has much in common conceptually with the blend of Hermetic
magic and theosophical and ecstatic lore that can be discerned in the writings of
Jewish and Christian Kabbalists of the Renaissance. 48
The patronage-based court circles of Renaissance Italy, like their earlier
counterparts in the Roman and Byzantine Empires, advanced the development of
Other Mystical Literatures in Florence
human culture by providing the ambiance and the means for elitist attainments.
One consequence of this environment, however, intended or not, was the limited
influence of its attainments on larger audiences. A culture that flourishes in the
shadow of powerful figures responds, even if not always consciously, to the
rarefied needs of the dominant elite.
17
SPANISH KABBALISTS IN ITALY
AFTER THE EXPULSION
i. The Arrival of the Spanish Kabbalists
Spanish Kabbalah arrived in Italy in two major waves: the first, at the end of the
thirteenth century, influenced the writings of Abraham Abulafia and Menahem
Recanati, as we saw in chapters 7 and 8. The first Spanish arrivals shaped their
kabbalistic sources in very significant ways, sometimes in response to the Italian
predisposition to a more speculative approach. In contrast, the second major wave
brought individuals who had been strongly shaped in a different intellectual
environment, with different kabbalistic texts and religious proclivities, and who
adapted themselves to only a marginal extent to the Italian ambiance. Indeed, they
rather resisted the Italian Kabbalah they encountered.
Spanish Kabbalists in Italy
Most of the few detailed studies we have on the Spanish Jews who arrived in
Italy after 1492 center upon influential figures such as Isaac Abravanel or Yitzhaq
Arama, who were not Kabbalists. 1 1 am not aware of any significant attempt to map
and analyze in detail the influx of Spanish Kabbalists. Six of these Kabbalists
arrived in Italy and lived there for a while between 1490 and 1500: R Yitzhaq
Mor Hayyim, R. Yehudah Hayyat, R Joseph ibn Shraga, R Joseph Alqastiel, 2
R Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi, 3 and R Yitzhaq ben Hayyim ha-Kohen. 4 At least
one more Kabbalist, R Abraham Saba, is reported to have visited Italy before his
death, but we need more information in order to confirm this possibility.
Mor Hayyim, Hayyat, and Ibn Shraga wrote kabbalistic works in Italy, and they
will preoccupy us in the following pages. Because it still remains to be confirmed
whether AlqastiePs influential kabbalistic responsa addressed to R Yehudah
Hayyat were composed in Italy, I shall refer to his work only tangentially. Ha-Levi
visited Italy but apparently did not write anything there, although at least one short
passage, to be discussed below, is relevant to our understanding of the relation-
ship between Jewish Kabbalists and their Christian contemporaries. Finally, we
shall not be much concerned with Yitzhaq ha-Kohen, whose knowledge of
Kabbalah does not appear to have been deep.
R Yehudah Hayyat is, in my opinion, the most productive and influential of the
generation of expelled Spanish Kabbalists active in Italy. Few kabbalistic treatises
were produced in the first generation immediately after the expulsion; much
more was written by Sephardic Kabbalists in the other centers of Jewish life: the
Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and the land of Israel. But though not numerous,
most of the writings produced in Italy had a significant impact on the course of
Kabbalah; Hayyat's Minhat Yehudah, in particular, became a major kabbalistic
classic, whose deep influence is visible throughout the kabbalistic literature, in
Italy and elsewhere. 5 In addition, the epistles of Mor Hayyim, although they have
reached us in only a few manuscripts, left a deep imprint on discussions of the
nature of the sefirot in the Ottoman Empire and later in the Safedian Kabbalah. 6
2. R Yehudah ben Ya'aqov Hayyat
The vicissitudes of R Yehudah Hayyat after the expulsion from Spain are relatively
well documented. In the preface to his commentary on Sejer Ma'areldiet ha-'Elohut,
Minhat Yehudah, his single kabbalistic treatise, he reports his travels, some of
which included terrible experiences during his departure from the Iberian penin-
sula and while in North Africa. Nevertheless, there are many crucial details that we
do not know, and they may affect our understanding of the formation of his
thought. So, for example, we do not know where he studied Kabbalah, who his
main master was, or what his kabbalistic views were before the expulsion. We
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Spanish Kabbalists in Italy
know that he was a Spaniard, although we do not know in what particular region
he lived. It seems that he was already a well-known and respected figure in Spain,
since he presents himself as a teacher of an unspecified community and also
reports the reaction of the Sephardic Jews in Italy to his plight. 7 From the fact that
he left Spain from Lisbon, we may assume that he was a Castilian Jew, not a
Catalonian.
Sometime during the winter of 1492-93 he sailed from Lisbon with his family
and some 200 other people. Because plague was widespread on the ship, it wan-
dered for four months, being refused entry at any port, and finally fell prey to
Basque pirates. The combination of sickness and famine persuaded half of the
refugees to convert to Christianity; others, including Hayyat's wife, died. After
being detained at anchor for two months in Malaga, the craft was allowed to leave.
Hayyat arrived in Fez, in North Africa, where a Muslim acquaintance of the
Kabbalist initiated a libel. Apparently Hayyat had organized a festival celebrating
the occasion of the defeat of the Muslims by the Catholic kings in 1492 before the
expulsion, which in the view of the Muslim passengers constituted a denigration
of Islam. He was rescued by the Jews, to whom he gave 200 books in return for the
ransom. After a stay in Fez, in the autumn of 1493 he left for Naples, where he may
have witnessed the French invasion in 1494, and then traveled on to Venice, where
he was very well received by Spanish refugees whom he calls "nobles."
Sometime around the mid-i490s Hayyat arrived in Mantua, where he met
another famous refugee from the expulsion, R. Joseph Yavetz, a conservative
thinker and the author of several theological and exegetical treatises. 8 Yavetz and
other "nobles and wise men" secured a promise from him to write a commentary
on Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut because "their soul desired to contemplate the delight
of the Lord and visit his palace," and he composed his commentary in order not to
"prevent them from learning." 9 Another reason for undertaking this project was
his own very high evaluation of the book on which he was asked to comment;
according to Hayyat, it was the gateway to kabbalistic issues that were not dis-
closed by other books of Kabbalah. Last, but not least, Hayyat mentions that
another Kabbalist, whose name he does not know, 10 had already produced a
commentary, widely available in the province of Mantua, that did not properly
reflect the actual content of Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut." None of the three factors
mentioned by Hayyat as motives for undertaking his commentary is related to the
expulsion or to any messianic expectations.
Hayyat mentions that while he was still in Spain he collected pieces of the Zohar
from various places, as well as most of the literature related to it. 12 He is convinced
that his devotion to the Zohar, and to Kabbalah in general, preserved his life through-
out the ordeals of the expulsion. Indeed, he presents all the autobiographical details
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Spanish Kabbalists in Italy
reported above in order to demonstrate the apotropaic function of the Zohar. Parts
of the Zohar, mainly the Tiqqunei Zohar, serve as the major source of the views and
quotations that permeate the commentary. 13 Hayyat claims in his preface that the
Zohar was practically unknown by the earlier Kabbalists, even by some important
ones; 14 he supports this statement by quoting a passage from one of the later layers
of the Zohar to the effect that the book will be revealed during the last generation,
namely the generation of the Messiah. Hayyat indicates that this is his generation,
and he asserts that as a result of study of the Zohar, the Messiah will come. This
assertion of the eschatological role of the study of the Zohar may gratify modern
scholars who discern a messianic change in Kabbalah as a result of the expulsion.
However, such a reading is, in my opinion, at least an exaggeration: Hayyat col-
lected the various parts of the book while in Spain, therefore before the expulsion.
Whether messianic hopes nourished his activity before that event cannot be estab-
lished on the basis of our current knowledge. However, if messianism indeed
played a significant role in his kabbalistic activity, he never explicitly relates it to his
experience of the expulsion. Moreover, the argument concerning the eschatological
effect of study of the book is not an innovation with Hayyat, but a view he quotes
from the Tiqqunei Zohar. And although we now know that Hayyat wrote his commen-
tary earlier than was commonly supposed, 15 it seems that already in the circle of
Sefer ha-Meshiu, namely before the expulsion from Spain, the relation between study
of the Zohar and redemption had been adapted from still earlier sources. 16 In any
case, it seems clear that Hayyat did not plunge into a project of bringing the Messiah
by printing or otherwise disseminating the Zohar. His two sentences concerning its
eschatological role had no impact on the bulk of his single masterpiece, Sejer Minhat
Yehudah. 17
Nevertheless, in Minhat Yehudah Hayyat challenges the Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut
whenever it contradicts the kabbalistic views of the Zohar. So, for example, he
writes: "I shall stand up and strengthen myself in order to struggle against the
rabbi [namely the author of Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut] concerning this topic." 18 Hayyat
wonders why the anonymous author followed the view of Nahmanides, R. Shlomo
ibn Adret, and their disciples, who espoused a worldview different from that of the
Zoharic literature. His mythical orientation, informed by the Zoharic theoso-
phies, 19 compels him to challenge the philosophically oriented interpretation of
Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut. 20 Thus in his commentary Hayyat presents the views of
the Zohar much more than he elucidates those of Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut. The fact
that Hayyat wrote an entire work on a book whose spiritual messages he did not
entirely accept may reflect the situation that Spanish Kabbalists confronted in
Italy: because writing on the Zohar itself was not attractive to the Italian Jewish
Kabbalists, he used their interest in Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut to disseminate a great
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Spanish Kabbalists in Italy
dose of mythical Kabbalah under the pretext of clarifying an essentially antimythi-
cal text. 21 However, by structuring his kabbalistic discourse around this specific
book, with its systematic approach to Kabbalah, Hayyat implicitly adopted the
problematic dominant among the Italian Kabbalists: discussions of the nature
of the divine world, namely the questions concerning the essence of the divine
manifestations. This systematic, almost Scholastic, form of explicating their own
views was widespread among the Italian Kabbalists, but less so in the Kabbalah
composed before the expulsions from Spain.
Hayyat was also unhappy with the kabbalistic views of another Italian Kabbalist,
whose name he does not mention." However, as Efraim Gottlieb has indicated, it
is reasonable to assume that the Kabbalist was R. Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano,
who flourished in the decade before Hayyat's arrival in Italy. 23 Hayyat's critique
centers on the divergences between his own instrumental view of the sefirot and
the essentialist one adopted by Genazzano, with the latter's assumption (explored
in chapter 5 above) that 'Ein So/was identical with the first sefirah. This purely
kabbalistic disagreement offers another example of the uneasiness of the Spanish
Kabbalists with what was written in this field in Italy.
3. R. Joseph ibn Shraga and R. AsherLemlein
Both R Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim and R. Yehudah Hayyat expressed their criticisms of
their contemporaries in rather mild terms; no sharp or explicit attack upon a living
Italian Kabbalist is extant in their writings. A third Kabbalist, also a refugee from
Spain via Portugal, adopted a different approach. R Joseph ibn Shraga, a Kabbalist
less known, less important, and less influential on the course of Kabbalah, 24 never-
theless enjoyed great veneration during his lifetime. 25 Sometimes referred to as the
Kabbalist from Agrigento, he wrote a commentary on the liturgy and several small
kabbalistic explanations of various topics, all of them still in manuscript. Several
folios containing kabbalistic commentaries on some pericopes are extant in two
manuscripts, and this writing was dedicated to R Leon Sinai of Cologne, the son of
R. Shmuel of Cologne. According to a manuscript note, this enterprise was not com-
pleted because the author died of an illness. 26 No great originality is discernible in
these writings; they rely heavily on the theosophy of the Zohar, including views from
Tiqqunei Zohar, which are quoted extensively. It seems that Ibn Shraga occasionally
"adopted" (and passed off as his own) texts that had been written in Spain long
before he was born, 27 a fact that reflects not only his personality but also the plight of
the knowledge of Kabbalah in Italy. Exemplary of this situation was an affair in
which he was involved that has already attracted the attention of scholars. 28
At the very beginning of the sixteenth century, the elderly R Moshe Hefetz,
whose identity still requires some research, asked R. Asher Lemlein some questions
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Spanish Kabbalists in Italy
related to the kabbalistic concept of metempsychosis. Lemlein's answers were
brought to the attention of Ibn Shraga, who, though not asked to react, wrote a
polemic against Asher's somewhat eccentric interpretation. 29 The vitriolic tone of
Ibn Shraga's remarks is also typical of Lemlein's when he is discussing Spanish
practices and thought. 30 One of the reasons for Lemlein's nonrepresentative views,
judged from the vantage point of the Spanish Kabbalah, was that his sources were
ancient mystical texts, from the Heikhalot literature, Hasidei Ashkenaz, and ecstatic
Kabbalah, none of them vital for an understanding of Spanish Kabbalah's view of
metempsychosis. 31 This encounter between the Ashkenazi-Italian author and the
contemporary Spanish Kabbalist embodies the chasm between these two Jewish
cultures. 32 Here we must restrict ourselves to considering only the rhetorical aspect
of the controversy, without entering into matters of substance.
From the outset Ibn Shraga depicts the views of R. Asher as "an inverted
world," 33 a locution drawn from the Talmud, 34 and thus a justification for the
necessity to react. Drawing heavily from the Zohar and Tiqqunei Zohar, Ibn Shraga
rejects Asher's solutions to R. Moshe Hefetz's questions one by one, calling an
answer "damaging" or affirming that it is "destroying the Torah in its entirety" or
that it consists in "vain things." 35 Just as Hayyat conveys total disagreement with
contemporary Italian Kabbalah, so Ibn Shraga rejects every one of the kabbalistic
answers provided by Lemlein.
4. Literary Genres of Spanish Kabbalists in Italy
One possible avenue for detecting a change in the content of kabbalistic thought
is the examination of a shift in the literary genres used in order to express it. So, for
example, the technical handbooks of Abulafia reflect his emphasis on the experi-
ential aspect of Kabbalah, whereas the popular Cordoveran Kabbalah reflects an
exoteric trend. An examination of the genres used by the Spanish Kabbalists in
Italy may help us to determine whether there was in fact a change in the content of
their thought.
Hayyat's Minhat Yehudah is a commentary on another kabbalistic book, the
anonymous Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut. As we learn from Gershom Scholem's
description of the commentaries on this book, Minhat Yehudah was preceded by at
least one major commentary, that of R. Reuven Tzarfati, which itself influenced
Hayyat. However, as far as we know, commentaries on Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut were
not widespread in Spanish Kabbalah, and Hayyat's testimony that the Mantuan
nobles asked him to write it may indicate that they were eager to learn about the
Sephardic perspective on this book. Thus it seems safe to assume that the Italian
environment, as well as concepts prevailing in Italy, informed his writing to a very
limited extent. Joseph ibn Shraga's writings reflect the same conservative mood:
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Spanish Kabbalists in Italy
his commentary on prayer, his fragments of homiletic commentaries on Genesis,
and his interpretation of kabbalistic secrets, as well as his eschatological text,
faithfully represent Sephardic literary genres prevalent before the expulsion. The
two kabbalistic epistles of R. Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim, sent before the expulsion,
reflect the Scholastic movement toward clarification of theological issues that was
dominant in Italy among the Italian Kabbalists. Among these three Kabbalists no
significant change in literary genres is apparent relative to those cultivated in
Spain and Italy. Since all these genres were in existence before the expulsion, there
is no way to argue that this event pushed the Kabbalists to adopt other modes of
expression.
Several types of Kabbalah existed in Italy in the generation of the expulsion,
operating on different levels and in different ways. Whereas Spanish Kabbalah
was particularist, antiphilosophical, and conservative, Italian Kabbalah, both
Jewish and Christian, was much more universalist, more inclined to magic, and
subject to interpretation through the use of a variety of philosophical trends. 36 A
monolithic, generalized vision of such a variegated literature prevents a proper
understanding both of its nature and of the different roles it played in the Italian
culture.
•2l8-
i8
TWO DIVERGING TYPES OF KABBALAH
IN LATE-FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ITALY
i. The "Good" Kabbalistic Books
Much of the discussion so far is based upon the assumption that there was a
significant difference between the various kabbalistic trends that developed in
Spain and the history of Kabbalah in Italy. In the latter case, different organiza-
tions of ideas, themes, and models that originated on the Iberian peninsula were
transported to Italy and transformed there. Some of these kabbalistic themes
and models had been marginalized in Spain but flowered in Italy. As we have seen,
for example, ecstatic Kabbalah as formulated by Abulafia and the predominantly
theosophical-theurgical Spanish Kabbalah were dramatically diverging trends
that came to be regarded as rivals. In fact Abulafia's ecstatic Kabbalah was
•2IQ-
Two Diverging Types of Kabbalah
banned from Spanish soil by R. Shlomo ibn Adret, a highly regarded Kabbalist
there.
Perhaps the most important document exemplifying the rupture between the
two types of Kabbalah, which contended in Italy in the generation of the expulsion
from the Iberian peninsula, is the index of books compiled by R Yehudah Hayyat in
the introduction to his Minhat Yehudah. The index consists of two lists of kabbalistic
books, "good" and "bad" ones, namely recommended books and books he sharply
criticizes, and these lists reflect not only his propensities but also, in my opinion,
basic trends in Kabbalah as evident in Spain and Italy during that generation. Let
me start with the recommendations of the Spanish Kabbalist:
These are the books that you shall approach [tiqrau 'eleihem]: Sefer Yetzirah,
attributed [ha-mekhkhuneh] to R Aqiva, blessed be his memory; Sefer ha-Bahir,
attributed to R Nehuniah ben ha-Qanah, should be a diadem to your head;
the Book of the Zohar "should not depart from your mouth" [Joshua i:8]; and
the books of R Joseph Gikatilla and those of R. [Moshe ben] Shem Tov de
Leon, you "shall tie them about thy neck" [Proverbs 6:21]; and the secrets of
Nahmanides should be written upon the table of your heart; and the books
of R Menahem Recanati, "thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy arm"
[Deuteronomy 6:7] ; and Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut with my present commen-
tary "shall be as frondets between thy eyes" [ibid.], and then you will be
successful in your ways and then you will be illuminated. 1
These books embody the classical theosophical-theurgical trend of Kabbalah,
which had dominated Spanish Kabbalah since the second half of the thirteenth
century, as well as Hayyat' s conception of a sustained historical progression from
Abraham the patriarch, to R. Akiva, to R. Shimeon bar Yohai, the alleged author
of the Zohar, followed by the medieval Kabbalists. Hayyat's use of biblical verses
can be seen as a strategy to canonize these books. These writings represent the
sources for most of Sefer Minhat Yehudah; thus the exaltation of the Zohar is in line
with the general trend of Hayyat's own form of Kabbalah.
2. The "Bad" Kabbalistic Books
Before presenting his list of recommended kabbalistic books, Hayyat deplores the
widespread presence of sources (including the anonymous commentary on Sefer
Ma'arekhet ha-'E!ohut) that interpret kabbalistic texts "according to philosophical
presuppositions [haqdamot be-jilosojiuah]; but this is not the way, neither is this
the city [2 Kings 6:19]. " 2 Then he expatiates on the other books "that have been
disseminated in this province [Mantua] , kabbalistic books that confuse the pure
mind." 3 First to be mentioned is "the divine sage, R Isaac ibn Latif, blessed be his
Two Diverging Types of Kabbalah
memory, the author of Sefer [Sha'ar] 4 ha-Shamayim and [Tzurat] ha-'Olam 5 and Tzeror
ha-Mor and Sefer Ginzei ha-Melelth, whose words are more precious than gems; but
insofar as his words concern the science of Kabbalah, one of his feet is within
while the other is without [Kabbalah] . Consequently, you may see only a small
part of them, but not see all of them. And if God tells me to do it, I shall distinguish
the fine flour from refuse." Although Hayyat respects Ibn Latif as a religious
thinker, he should not be studied as a Kabbalist.
The criticisms of Abulafia are much more severe, amounting to the most inten-
sive and virulent assault on the views of this controversial Kabbalist. Hayyat admits
that he has seen "many books" 6 by Abulafia, but he refers to only three by name:
Sejer 'Or ha-Sekhel, Sefer Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', and one of Abulafia's commentaries
on the Guide of the Perplexed. He describes the founder of ecstatic Kabbalah as
"mad," and his books as "replete with imaginary things and fakes invented by his
heart." 7 Hayyat calls Maimonides himself he-hakham ha-'Elohiy, "the divine sage"; 8
his critique is aimed not at Maimonides' philosophy, 9 but at the synthesis of
philosophy and Kabbalah. Unlike the Italian Jews and Christians of the same
period, who incorporated nonkabbalistic forms of knowledge into their books of
Kabbalah, Hayyat refused to do so. Last in Hayyat's list of books to be avoided are
the works of Shmuel ibn Motot, a late-fourteenth-century Castilian philosopher
who occasionally ventured into the kabbalistic realm: "The sage Matut; you should
not pay attention to his ways, neither come close to the entrance of his door, since
he has a wicked rod 10 in his hand, in order to cause you to deviate from the right
way and go to the crooked one."
These three authors and the anonymous commentary on Sefer Ma'arelchet
ha-'Elohut have two features in common: all combine Kabbalah with philosophy, and
thus "confuse the pure mind"; and all were widely accessible in the environs of
Mantua. Such a blend of Kabbalah can be found in the writings of a Mantuan
Kabbalist who flourished precisely in the period of Hayyat's stay in the area:
R. Yohanan Alemanno, who was born in Mantua, was educated there, and probably
returned to that city after a stay in Florence, was mounting a sustained effort to
explain Kabbalah in a more rational way, praising the virtues of "the Kabbalah that
is understood by reason." 11 It is clear that Alemanno was acquainted with Hayyat's
book very early; indeed, he seems to be the first author to have quoted from Sefer
Minhat Yehudah. 12 Hayyat's emphasis on the centrality of the Zohar as the sole sound
form of kabbalistic thought stands in marked contrast to the marginality of the
Spanish classic in the fabric of Italian Kabbalah during his lifetime. Neither
Alemanno nor his contemporary Italian Kabbalists were well acquainted with this
book, and he quotes it only very rarely, in many cases in a Hebrew translation. 13 As
such, it reflects the confrontation in Italy between two types of Kabbalah.
Two Diverging Types of Kabbalah
3. Kabbalah and Philosophy in the Generation of the Expulsion
The Spanish Kabbalists who arrived in Italy after the expulsion reacted with
polemics to their encounter with a different kabbalistic paradigm. In them, the
Spanish Kabbalah that had prevailed in the fifteenth century, which rejected any
role for philosophy in pure Kabbalah, faced an Italian Kabbalah that combined a
variety of intellectual trends: Kabbalah, philosophy, and magic. 14 Yet we should
not view the ensuing clash between the two paradigms, the purist or particularist
one versus the synthetic or universalist, as a direct product of the terrible events
surrounding the expulsion. Both before and after that watershed, Spanish
Kabbalists, most notably the circle affiliated with Sejer ha-Meshiv, strenuously
rejected philosophical speculations. 15 However, members of this circle were not
active in Italy. The more moderate views of another Spanish Kabbalist, R. Yitzhaq
Mor Hayyim, provide more relevant evidence that the situation and the reaction of
Yehudah Hayyat were independent of the expulsion crisis.
Two years before the expulsion, R. Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim visited Italy for a while
on his way to the land of Israel. 16 On Italian soil he met at least two people inter-
ested in Kabbalah, and he wrote two letters to one of them. R. Yitzhaq of Pisa,
apparently staying in Pisa or Florence, is the addressee of these letters; the second
person, mentioned only in passing, was a certain R. Yohanan who enjoyed a close
association with R. Isaac, and whom I propose identifying as R. Yitzhaq's teacher,
R. Yohanan Alemanno. 17 In one of his letters Mor Hayyim expresses the hope that
whenever his views differ "from the view of R. Yohanan, let God safeguard him, I
am sure that you will find, because of the quality of your mind, the reason for my
deviance." 18 Later in the letter Mor Hayyim becomes much more insistent: "when
you inquire into these matters, you should not follow the [views] of those sages
who regard the intelligibilia as the root [of their speculations] and interpret
kabbalistic matters in a way that accords with philosophy ['iyyun]. But you shall
regard Kabbalah as your root and you shall make an effort that the intellect will
agree with it. But if your excellency is not able to do it, you should know that there
is a limit to the intellect, but that the Kabbalah, which was received from the
mouth of a prophet, is higher than the intellect, so that it can correct whatever
the intellect has distorted." 19
We should not reduce the warnings of Mor Hayyim to an attempt to neutralize
the influence of Alemanno's philosophization of Kabbalah. It seems that the
Spanish Kabbalist regarded as dangerous any effort to introduce speculative
approaches when interpreting Kabbalah. In the other letter to R. Yitzhaq, written
some months earlier, he declares that his views on the nature of the sefirot can be
ascertained by reading "all the books that agree with the view of R. Shimeon bar
Two Diverging Types of Kabbalah
Yohai [namely the alleged author of the Zohar] regarding the emanation of the
sefirot and their expansion. But rational inquiry concerning these matters is
something forbidden to us." 20
In addition to the philosophical approach of Yohanan Alemanno, which
attracted the criticism of Mor Hayyim, the works of Alemanno's younger contem-
poraries, and perhaps also companions, R. David Messer Leon and R Abraham de
Balmes, 21 as well as a kabbalistic epistle that may have been written by R. Yitzhaq
of Pisa, 22 combined Kabbalah and philosophy. Whereas Alemanno tended to
introduce Neoplatonic concepts, as well as the Aristotelian ones espoused by
medieval thinkers, the other two Renaissance Kabbalists were decidedly more
sympathetic to various forms of Aristotelianism. In the case of Messer Leon, the
impact of Thomism and of theosophy is also evident, as Hava Tirosh-Rothschild
(Tirosh-Samuelson) has shown. 23
The Christian Kabbalists in Italy understood Jewish Kabbalah as a conduit of and
pregnant with a theological message that both adumbrated Christianity was at the
same time consonant with philosophical stands, Platonic and Neoplatonic, Hermetic
and "Zoroastrian." Thus Pico della Mirandola compared a certain kind of
Kabbalah to the "Catholic philosophy," namely the universal philosophy. 24 But
Johann Reuchlin's approach to Kabbalah was much more explicit and instructive.
For him, as for Pico — and many modern scholars of Kabbalah — there was no great
significance in whether a Kabbalist was an Italian Jew or a Sephardic one. Their belief
in the single message of a transspatial Kabbalah blurred the differences between
developments in the two countries. Thus, seduced by the image of the greatness of
the Spanish Kabbalah, Reuchlin invented an imaginary encounter in Frankfurt
between a Spanish Kabbalist, named Simon ben Eleazar, and a Pythagorean thinker
named Philolaus and a Muslim figure named Marranus. Since the names are overtly
symbolic and not historical, I assume that the use of the name Simon for a Kabbalist
is related to the figure of R Shimeon bar Yohai, the alleged author of the Zohar,
despite the fact that Reuchlin does not quote from this book. The explicit purpose of
the conversation among these figures is to help introduce Pythagoreanism in
Germany, a mission that preoccupied Reuchlin throughout De Arte Cabalistica. In this
effort he sought to emulate Marsilio Ficino, who introduced Plato in Italy, and
Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, who "brought out Aristode" in France. Reuchlin believed
that Kabbalah was one of the sources of Pythagoras's thought; 25 he laments: "I
have only been able to glean from the Hebrew Kabbalah, since it derives in origin
from the teachers of Kabbalah, and then was lost by our ancestors, disappearing
from southern Italy [Magna Graecia] into the kabbalistic writings." 26
This is a fascinating reversal of the medieval Jewish complaint about the loss of
the sciences among the Jews as a result of the exile. The Christian Kabbalist argues
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Two Diverging Types of Kabbalah
that Kabbalah preserves the ancient philosophy that otherwise would be lost; he
is writing about "the symbolic philosophy of the art of Kabbalah so as to make
Pythagorean doctrine better known to scholars." 27 In combining the glamor of
Sephardi greatness in matters of Kabbalah with the Italian conception of Kabbalah,
Reuchlin produced a hybrid whose main figure, a Sephardic Kabbalist, would
in reality have vehemently protested against such an understanding of Spanish
mystical lore.
The speculative similarities between the Jewish and Christian conceptions of
Kabbalah in Italy may indicate a reciprocal osmotic influence. I do not want to
undertake here a discussion of such a complex issue. However, the possibility may
serve as the background for a fact that is paramount for some aspects of our discus-
sion here: the Italian Kabbalists in the period under scrutiny were self-taught think-
ers. Few of them, if any, studied with authoritative figures in the domain of this lore.
Thus we could expect a certain uncertainty in their responses to criticism by the
Sephardic Kabbalists. However, although they respected the Spaniards' positions
and writings, the Italian Kabbalists were not ready to bow to their authority. I am
inclined to attribute such an attitude to the feeling that their speculative and open
trend, and not the Sephardic reticence toward philosophy, was more attuned to the
spirit of their age, as expressed by the renascence of philosophy and the emergence
of the philosophical understanding of Kabbalah among Christians. 28
4. The Zoharand Italian Kabbalah
Like Yehudah Hayyat, Mor Hayyim assumed that in matters of Kabbalah the Zohar
was the ultimate authority, 29 and he, too, was hostile to philosophical intrusions.
Also like Hayyat, he complained that "the Book of the Zohar is not available in its
entirety in one province, but it is dispersed throughout all the provinces. This
passage I have copied from the Book of the Zohar that I have found in the academy of
R. Eliezer, let God safeguard him, in the city of Lisbon." 30 Such a confession would
have been meaningful only in a place where the Zohar was very little known. Had
considerable parts of this book been available in Italy, no one would have
mentioned in what specific Portuguese academy he had copied one of the most
profound and important parts of the Zohar. Mor Hayyim's analysis of the Zoharic
passage was intended to counteract the view, represented by R, Menahem
Recanati's "instrumental" theosophy, that the sefirot were not identical with the
divine essence. 31 Mor Hayyim — in my opinion correctly — interpreted the text of
the Zohar as pointing to the opposite view, that the sefirot were identical with the
divine essence. He presented this interpretation both as his own Kabbalah and as
"the Kabbalah of all the sages of Sefarad [Kabbalat Icol hakhmei Sefarad], blessed
be their memory, since all of them decided that the sefirot are not created
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Two Diverging Types of Kabbalah
[entities]." 32 By referring thus to the Sephardic sages, Mor Hayyim placed himself
in specific opposition to the stand of the Italian Recanati. The awareness of the
existence of a Sephardic Kabbalah reflects awareness, very similar to that of Hayyat
later on, that his traditional mystical view was representative of Spanish Jewish
thought. Indeed in his two letters to R Yitzhaq of Pisa Mor Hayyim wrote the
epithet Sephardi after his name."
Although Mor Hayyim focused his criticism on Recanati, 34 his mention of
Alemanno prompted a strong reaction. Copying the Zoharic text that had
been translated into Hebrew and interpreted by Mor Hayyim, but without men-
tioning the Spanish Kabbalist's interpretation, Alemanno offered a very different
interpretation. 35
The voluminous works of Yohanan Alemanno demonstrate a strong nexus
between the Zoharic Kabbalah of Spain and the relative ignorance of this seminal
book in Italy. The role played by the Zohar in his earlier works is marginal. A few
quotations from the Zohar appear in his later works, sometimes in Hebrew and
many of them drawn from R Menahem Recanati and Hayyat's Minhat Yehudah. In
his study program, where he lists several kabbalistic writings to be studied by the
ideal student, the Zohar is not mentioned at all. 36
The Zohar is also absent from the writings of R Asher Lemlein, another
Kabbalist active in northern Italy, as Efraim Kupfer noticed three decades ago. 37
Even more persuasive are the statements of R Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim to his Italian
addressee, R Yitzhaq of Pisa, himself a Kabbalist. In his first letter he copied a
passage from the Zohar in its original Aramaic. Unfortunately, we do not have the
answer of Yitzhaq of Pisa, but in his second letter Mor Hayyim wrote: "Since we
are not familiar in this country [namely Italy] with the Jerusalemite Targum
[namely Aramaic] , I decided to translate it into Hebrew word by word; then I shall
divide the passage into paragraphs and explain each one separately, to the extent
that I am able to do so." 38
There is no reason to doubt this evidence; it demonstrates that in Italy not only
were even Kabbalists unable to find large portions of the Zohar, but also they found
it difficult to read, since the Aramaic dialect in which it was written was unknown
to them. Even translations into Hebrew failed to provide enough help, and the
translated texts had to be explained in detail. On the other hand, Alemanno
asserted that "the sages of Israel were already divided among themselves and were
confused about the question whether the sefirot are the essence of the Godhead or
whether they are separate from Him, as can be seen from a passage attributed
[meyuhas] to Rashby in the Book of the Zohar, found [in the hands of some] few
persons, in addition to the translation into Hebrew, because of its profoundness
in the language of the Jerusalemite [namely the Palestinian Talmud]." 39
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Two Diverging Types of Kabbalah
This is quite valuable testimony of the marginal role played by the Zohar among
the Italian Kabbalists. Moreover, since the small fragment discussed by Alemanno
is identical with that sent to and translated for Yitzhaq of Pisa, we may infer the
paucity of Zoharic literature among Italian intellectuals interested in Kabbalah. An
inspection of the kabbalistic sources of R. David Messer Leon seems to confirm
this conclusion. The same conclusion emerges from an inspection of the kabbal-
istic literature translated by Flavius Mithridates for Pico della Mirandola. In his
very massive project of translations, which in my opinion reflect the kabbalistic
literature extant and studied in Italy, and much less in Spain, we find no significant
Zoharic passage. To the extent that the book was known or quoted, the clear inter-
mediary source was R. Menahem Recanati's Commentary on the Torah. 40 Even later,
in the kabbalistic writings of Johann Reuchlin, composed at the very end of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, that is, precisely the period
under scrutiny here, the Zohar played a very marginal role. 41 In contrast, the Zohar
was quoted by Spanish converts to Christianity who wrote about Kabbalah, as
were Zoharic texts that are not to be found in the extant Zoharic corpus. 42 Thus, it
is evident that even among the Christian Kabbalists, the dichotomy between Spain
and Italy in knowledge of the Zohar, and its availability, remained significant.
Against the background of the neglect, not to say ignorance, of the central book
of Spanish Kabbalah among Kabbalists in Italy, the insistence on the importance of
the Zohar by the two Spanish Kabbalists active there is much easier to understand.
•226-
19
JEWISH KABBALAH IN
CHRISTIAN GARB
i. Seeking the Beginnings of Christian Kabbalah
The historical beginnings of both Jewish and Christian Kabbalah remain matters
of debate among scholars. 1 Precisely when a certain phenomenon is regarded as
coming into being depends on the presence of the conceptual minimum required
to define it. The dominant scholarly definition of Kabbalah regards its crucial
component as a concern with the ten divine powers, the ten sefirot. In line with
this view, Jewish ICabbalah emerged in Languedoc in the last decades of the twelfth
century, and Christian ICabbalah in the final decades of the thirteenth. But if we
turn to another way of defining ICabbalah, found already in the eleventh century, as
an esoteric tradition concerning the divine names, the situation becomes much
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Jewish Kabbalah in Christian Garb
more complex. 2 Indeed, some passages dealing with divine names recur in
Christian texts early in the thirteenth century, in the discussions of Joachim de
Fiore. 3 At the end of the same century and early in the next, Arnauld of Villanova
wrote a whole treatise dealing with the divine name. 4 Whether this treatise reflects
the impact of Abraham Abulafia's Kabbalah remains to be investigated.
However, it is possible to approach the question from another angle: instead of
regarding the passage of some traditions from one type of religion to another as
the defining moment of the emergence of a certain new phenomenon, we should
perhaps consider the absorption, especially the creative one, of the techniques
that are characteristic of one type of lore by a thinker belonging to another reli-
gion. In our case, the question would be not when a Christian adopted some forms
of Jewish esoteric traditions but when a Christian thinker adopted a kabbalistic
type of thinking. Thus, the occurrence of a certain technique of interpreting the
first word of the Bible by separating its letters in the work of the twelfth-century
English theologian Alexander of Neckham, 5 or of the peculiar combination of
letters by means of concentric circles and the theory of a hierarchy of glories in
that of Ramon Llull, 6 apparently under the influence of Jewish sources, may fit this
second approach.
Lacking in these examples is the Christian writer's explicit awareness that,
when dealing with divine names or with combinatory techniques, he is operating
in a realm of esoteric Jewish lore. However, such awareness apparently already
existed in the last third of the thirteenth century, when Alfonso Sabio's nephew,
Juan Manuel, testified about his famous uncle: "Furthermore, he ordered trans-
lated the whole law of the Jews, and even their Talmud, and other knowledge,
which is called qabbalah and which the Jews keep closely secret. And he did this so
it might be manifest through their own law that it is a [mere] presentation of that
law which we Christians have; and that they, like the Moors, are in grave error and
in peril of losing their souls." 7
If this passage is reliable, and I see no reason to doubt it, then a significant seg-
ment of kabbalistic literature had been translated as early as the 1270s. According
to this testimony, the goal of Sabio's project of translation was to save the souls of
the Jews and Muslims. However, the uses of Kabbalah in the writings of converts
like Alfonso de Valladolid or, later, Paulus de Heredia did not capture the imagina-
tion of their contemporaries or produce effects in European culture. Not until the
writings of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in the mid-i48os did those Jewish
elements become a significant part of any defined Christian circle or come to
constitute a tradition in their own right.
Christian Kabbalah is, prima facie, an enigma. Until the end of the fifteenth
century, Jewish Kabbalah was considered by Jews themselves to be an esoteric
Jewish Kabbalah in Christian Garb
lore; conceived to be the core of Judaism, it was to be transmitted only to a few
initiates both in manuscripts and orally. Yet it seems that in a very short time this
closely guarded, peculiarly Jewish religious tradition found a place in Christian
religious thought.
The study of Christian Kabbalah goes back some decades. The first compre-
hensive study of some of the major issues and texts of Christian Kabbalah, by
Joseph Blau, 8 did not address how Kabbalah was transposed into a Christian
idiom, and how Christians came to accept such a peculiarly Jewish type of lore.
Perhaps the earliest and greatest contributor to an understanding of the literature
of Christian Kabbalah was Francois Secret, who surveyed and described the
available material in Latin and Italian, 9 although few of his writings address the
conceptual aspects of this literature.
Another outstanding scholar of the Renaissance, Dame Frances Amelia Yates,
in explaining the emergence of magic and the mysticism in the amalgam of
Renaissance thought, asserted that Kabbalah was an important component, emerg-
ing at the end of the fifteenth century and becoming even more important in the
sixteenth and seventeenth. 10 But Yates was not a student of Jewish Kabbalah, and
she herself acknowledged that she was not competent to assess the ultimate contri-
bution of Kabbalah to Christian culture. In fact she attributed more importance to
this type of Jewish lore than seems warranted."
The most important contributions to an understanding of the emergence of the
Christian Kabbalah came from Gershom Scholem's student Chaim Wirszubski.
Wirszubski described in great detail the penetration of kabbalistic texts and con-
cepts into the milieu of Christian Florentine intellectuals. He traced the precise
Hebrew sources of most of Pico's kabbalistic discussions and showed what hap-
pened to the original texts when they were transferred into a Christian milieu. By
meticulously studying the translations into Latin of a long series of Hebrew kab-
balistic texts, Wirszubski was able to locate precisely most of Pico's kabbalistic
sources and to delineate the boundaries of his knowledge of Kabbalah. 12
Wirszubski's premature death prevented him from addressing the phenomeno-
logical differences between Jewish and the Christian Kabbalah. As we saw in
chapter 14, we may discover linkages in the unedited writings of a Jewish compan-
ion of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the erudite R. Yohanan Alemanno, who lived
for many years in Florence. Recently Giulio Busi has edited one of the Hebrew
treatises translated into Latin by Mithridates, 13 and Franco Bacchelli has identified
new translations into Latin in Pico's circle. 14 And over several decades scholars have
illumined the roles of Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio and others who flourished
in northern Italy at the end of the fifteenth century and who resorted in a significant
manner to Jewish esoterica. 15
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Jewish Kabbalah in Christian Garb
So in many ways we remain in the preliminary stages of scholarship with regard
to Christian Kabbalah. In the next few pages I shall first point out several character-
istics that appear to be either unique to Christian Kabbalah or, at least, dominant
in this literature but marginal in the Jewish one; then I shall try to explain what
happened when the translation took place.
2. Christian Kabbalah, Christology, and Conversion
The most obvious changes introduced by Christian Kabbalists are Christological
interpretations of some elements in the Jewish Kabbalah. To achieve this effect,
Christian scholars used several modes of Jewish, especially kabbalistic, exegetical
devices, especially combinations of letters and symbolic exegesis. Their main
intention was to show that Kabbalah was less a Jewish lore than a veiled Christian
theology. Since ICabbalah was regarded by both Jews and Christians as an ancient
tradition originating long before the emergence of Christianity, it became polemi-
cally important to demonstrate that Christological hints could be found even in
the esoteric Jewish traditions. This was one of the major theological points made
by the first Christian Kabbalists.
There were two main ways of introducing Christological topics into Jewish
material. One was to use the concept of the Christ to interpret the realm of the ten
sefirot — which is intermediary between the hidden deity and the created world.
This realm had already been described by the earliest Jewish Kabbalists as having
an anthropomorphic structure, better known as 'Adam Qadmon, the Primordial
Man, or 'Adam 'Elyon, the Supernal Man. The anthropomorphic imagery was part
and parcel of the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah; it was apparent in the theo-
sophical doctrines of the Bahir, and it became even more conspicuous in the Zohar.
The Christian Kabbalists translated this anthropomorphic schema into a graphic
Christological structure. None of the Jewish Kabbalists before the Renaissance
had presented the configuration of the ten sefirot in such a way. But now the
Christian Kabbalists presented the whole system of sefirot (or in other cases only
one of the sefirot) as deus reuelatus, namely as Christ.
The other major strategy used by Christian Kabbalists was to decode a major
secret of Jewish esotericism, namely the nature of the Tetragrammaton, in Christian
terms. In Jewish mysticism, both before medieval Kabbalah and afterward, the
secret of the Tetragrammaton lay in the peculiar, and allegedly unknown, vocaliza-
tion of the four known consonants of the divine name. The pronunciation of the
Tetragrammaton was part of the ancient ritual of the high priest in the Temple on
the Day of Atonement. One of the first Christian Kabbalists, Johann Reuchlin, in his
early kabbalistic book about the power of the divine name, De Verbo Mirrfico, intro-
duced a change in the Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, so that it
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Jewish Kabbalah in Christian Garb
would point to the name of Jesus. This strategy involved dividing the four letters into
two units by introducing between them the Hebrew letter shin, so that the Hebrew
Tetragrammaton became a Pentagrammaton: YHShVH. Thus one of the most impor-
tant topics of Jewish esotericism was construed as pointing to Christianity.
These changes in the understanding the secrets of Kabbalah were not mere
expressions of the faith of Christian intellectuals. In many cases they served as a
tool in the mission of converting Jews to Christianity. This development is already
evident in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. In his commentary on the seven days of
creation, Heptaplus, composed in 1487, he wrote:
But because what is said by the Hebrews is new to the Latins, 16 it could not be
easily understood by our people unless, hatched from a twin egg, as they say, I
explained a great part or almost the totality of the ancient teachings of the
Hebrew dogmas. I decided to postpone this until elsewhere I had written about
Hebrew dogmas in greater detail and had made known to my contemporaries
these ideas, showing how much these ideas agree with Egyptian wisdom, how
much with Platonic philosophy, and how much with Catholic truth. And, there-
fore, if I find the Hebrews to agree with us in something, I shall order them to
stand by the ancient traditions of their fathers; if I find a place where they dis-
agree, then, drawn up in Catholic legions, I shall make an attack against them.
Finally, whatever I find foreign to the evangelic truth, I shall refute in keeping
with my power; while any principle that is sacred and true, as from a wrongful
possessor, I shall transfer from the Synagogue to us, the legitimate Israelites. 17
I assume that the dogmas of the ancient Jews that were new to the "Latins" were
kabbalistic teachings, which indeed preoccupied Pico in other, earlier writings. In
this passage Pico asserts that Kabbalah has affinities with a variety of speculative
literatures: Platonism, Egyptian lore, and Christianity. There is no yoking here of
Kabbalah and magic.
Pico's fifth kabbalistic thesis, written before the Heptaplus, illumines the mis-
sionary aspect of his intellectual enterprise: "Every Hebrew Kabbalist following
the principles and sayings of the science of Kabbalah is inevitably forced to
concede, without addition, omission, or variation, precisely what the Catholic
faith of Christians maintains concerning the Trinity and every divine Person:
Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit." 18 Kabbalah is thus the best tool to convince Jews
of the correctness of Christian theology.
3. Christian Kabbalah and Hermeneutics
We have noted the Christological interpretations of Jewish Kabbalah as essential
for the emergence of the Christian one. The second major metamorphosis of
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Jewish Kabbalah in Christian Garb
Jewish Kabbalah is related to the appearance of an emphasis, actually an overem-
phasis, on the importance of the Jewish exegetical devices found already in Jewish
kabbalistic texts. Since the late thirteenth century, Jewish Kabbalah employed a
great variety of exegetical devices as part of a greater hermeneutical enterprise: the
mystical reinterpretation of the Jewish canonical writings and rituals. Only by
mastering the exegetical methods of the Jewish Kabbalists could the Christians
convince Jews of the verity of the Christian theological claims.
In Jewish kabbalistic sources before and after the Renaissance, one finds no
Christian concepts extracted by the use of kabbalistic exegetical devices. But when
kabbalistic hermeneutics were introduced into Christian circles, a plethora of
Christian themes were propelled into the Hebrew Bible — and into kabbalistic
texts like the Zohar. This transformation of hermeneutics into a major concern —
rather than of secondary interest, as in most of the Jewish sources — is central to
Christian Kabbalah, and indeed, the most important treatise on kabbalistic herme-
neutics was written by Nicolas le Fevre de la Boderie, a Christian Kabbalist in
France in the mid-sixteenth century. 19 The early centrality of hermeneutics in
Christian Kabbalah influenced not only a few forms of Christian theology but also
European culture in general. Even as Renaissance humanists were embracing a
more critical, historical-philological approach to texts, Christian Kabbalists were
subscribing to interpretation as an open process in which readers should use their
exegetical abilities to reveal different levels of understanding.
4. Christian Kabbalah, Philosophy, and the Status of
Kabbalistic Theurgy
Like Renaissance thought in general, Christian Renaissance Kabbalah was eclec-
tic, in this case combining kabbalistic ideas with Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and
Pythagorean concepts. In contrast, although philosophical elements infiltrated
Kabbalah very early, only rarely did Jewish Kabbalists acknowledge their alien
sources, and until the late fifteenth century, large-scale combinations of Kabbalah
with philosophy remained marginal in the vast Jewish kabbalistic literature.
Several aspects of Jewish Kabbalah were radically changed by its integration into
more comprehensive intellectual systems. 20 Such integration obliterated, for
example, the dynamic nature of Jewish Kabbalah. 21 As we have seen, the theosoph-
ical system of the Jewish Kabbalists was based upon the assumption that there are
ongoing processes in the divine world. The sefirot were understood in most Jewish
texts not as static but rather as constantly changing in their relationship. Most
Jewish Kabbalists before and after the emergence of Christian Kabbalah assumed
that it was possible to influence these supernal processes by intentional, namely
kabbalistic, performance of Jewish ritual. The introduction of other philosophical
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Jewish Kabbalah in Christian Garb
ideas in Christian treatises on Kabbalah obliterated concepts of the dynamic
nature of the sefirot. Such a static understanding of the sefirot is obvious in Pico
della Mirandola and most of his immediate followers, who instead identified them
with the Platonic Ideas. 22
An even more profound change effected in theosophical Kabbalah was the oblit-
eration of the theurgic nature of this mystical lore. One of the core characteristics
of Jewish Kabbalah was the affinity between human activity — the performance of
the mitzujot — and the state of the divine world: any important human act below had
an impact on high. The Christian Kabbalists' rejection of the Jewish command-
ments resulted in a drastic separation between human activity — represented in
Jewish sources mainly by the biblical and rabbinic commandments — and the theo-
sophical systems. The Christian version of Kabbalah was concerned with concepts
providing a map of the divine world rather than a guide to experience. In this
approach they resembled the earlier Christian Gnostics.
5. The Wider Dissemination of Kabbalah
Among the Jews, Kabbalah was an esoteric lore, to be studied by a tiny elite. In
contrast, the Christians published treatises on Kabbalah as soon as they were writ-
ten: Pico published his kabbalistic theses in i486; a short time afterward Reuchlin
published his two books on Kabbalah; and yet other Christian kabbalistic texts
appeared before the mid-sixteenth century. This trend, I believe, was among the
factors that prompted some Jews in the mid-sixteenth century to begin publishing
what they considered to be the authentic Kabbalah. Thus the shift from esoteric
to exoteric, which was such a major factor in the dissemination of Christian
Kabbalah, ultimately also affected the Jewish lore. 23 It seems reasonable to assume
that the Jewish Kabbalists became more open to the idea of an exoteric Kabbalah
as a result of contacts with their Christian contemporaries even as they printed
their original texts to counteract Christological interpretations of the Jewish lore.
No major document written in the first stage of Spanish Kabbalah seems to
have been translated into any European language before the Renaissance. Sefer
Raziel, discussed in chapter 16, is, so far as we know, the only exception. However,
as Scholem noted, Reuchlin was clearly acquainted with some concepts of
R. Azriel of Gerona, whom he quoted twice in Dc Arte Cabalistka. 24 From the same
Hebrew manuscript from which he quoted R Azriel's views, Reuchlin drew upon
kabbalistic material connected to the thirteenth-century Spanish kabbalistic
works identified by Scholem as forming the literature around the Sefer ha-'Iyyun, or
Book of Contemplation. But interesting as these short quotations may be, they did
not substantially affect Reuchlin's conception of Kabbalah. Nor was Pico della
Mirandola acquainted with the sources of this first stage of Spanish Kabbalah.
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Jewish Kabbalah in Christian Garb
This situation changed substantially during the second stage of Spanish
Kabbalah, when translations of several important treatises by Flavius Mithridates,
Paulus Riccius, and Felix Pratensis directly influenced Pico's kabbalistic theses,
the works of Johann Reuchlin, and Francesco Zorzi Veneto's influential
De Harmonia Mundi. 25 This phase of Kabbalah was the basis of most developments
in Christian Kabbalah. Two major elements characteristic of these kabbalistic
works attracted the attention of the Christian thinkers: the sefirotic hierarchy,
commonly conceived of by Jewish Kabbalists as forming the supernal man, was
easily related to a cosmic conception of Christ; and the flexible exegetical
techniques elaborated in the last quarter of the thirteenth century (partially under
the influence of the fourfold Christian exegetical methods) was appropriated by
many Christian Kabbalists. These two issues, important also in the Hebrew texts,
came to the fore in the Christian works on Kabbalah, though in very peculiar ways.
The increased dissemination of kabbalistic ideas, beginning at the end of the
fifteenth century, must be understood in two wider contexts, that of the intellec-
tual ambiance in Florence and, even more generally, that of the development of
printing. The latter factor contributed substantially to the propagation of cultural
developments in northern Italy beyond the small circle around the Medicis.
Printing also ensured continuity. However, the more interesting question still
remains: How and why did Christian intellectuals there adopt Jewish esoterics as
a domain of interest and even of creativity? An answer to such a question is never
simple, and we should allow for a coalescence of several factors.
First and foremost, Kabbalah was studied, translated, and amalgamated into
Christian speculation in a very specific intellectual circle, which emerged two
decades earlier as part of the efforts of Marsilio Ficino. Ficino was not only instru-
mental in rendering into Latin the huge Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic
corpora; he was also a thinker who offered a synthesis between the various forms
of thought he translated and Christian theology. 26 The openness of this circle to
some aspects of ancient pagan traditions provided a crucial background to the
next stage of translations, from Hebrew. Without the open attitude that influenced
acceptance of the relevance of the pagan corpus, it seems unlikely that the Hebrew
mystical writings would have been embraced so warmly in this circle. In any case,
the circle that produced the Florentine Renaissance, under the aegis of the Medici
family, is very relevant to both the emergence and the content of Reuchlin's
kabbalistic project; he was incited by a conversation with Giovanni Pico to embark
on the study of Kabbalah, and he was also inspired by Pico's Christian and magical
understandings of Kabbalah. In dedicating his De Arte Cabalistica to Leo X, a pope
from the Medici family, Reuchlin consciously supported a Florentine cultural
phenomenon.
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Jewish Kabbalah in Christian Garb
These two factors — a substantial acquaintance with kabbalistic material and a
new means of assuring continuity — seem to underpin the late-fifteenth-century
Florentine interest in Jewish mysticism as the founding moment of Christian
Kabbalah. This perspective is based more upon cultural intellectual assumptions
than upon conceptual ones. By these two criteria, Reuchlin can be seen as one of
the founders of this branch of Christian thought.
Whereas Christian Kabbalah spread from Italy into Germany, France, and
England, Spain and Portugal remained closed to its ideas, 27 chiefly as a result of
the presence of the Inquisition, which deterred Spanish thinkers from studying
and even less exploiting the theological possibilities inherent in the variety of
autochthonous forms of Jewish mysticism. The diverging attitudes toward
Kabbalah in Spain and Italy are emblematic of the relative resistance and openness
of those cultures to other bodies of knowledge in general. Leone Ebreo, who had
been expelled from Portugal, would never write a bestseller in his motherland. It
was the more receptive ambiance of Italy that allowed him to flower, as was the
case for Christian Kabbalah.
•235-
20
ANTHROPOIDS FROM THE MIDDLE
AGES TO RENAISSANCE ITALY
i. Anthropoids in Medieval Jewish Literature
In this chapter and the next I deal with two different forms of the artificial anthro-
poids discussed in medieval and Renaissance literature. This topic is crucial for an
understanding of Jewish esotericism in general, as well as its metamorphoses in
Jewish folklore and literature both inside and outside Judaism. As Yehuda Liebes
put it, this topic is the acme of kabbalistic literature. 1 Its presence in Italian Jewish
and Christian authors and its transformations in the different models of Kabbalah
(the magical, the ecstatic, and the theosophical-theurgical) illustrate the vitality of
the topic of artificial anthropoids in Italy and the methodological importance
of the three models. The discussions that arrived in the Italian peninsula from
•236-
Anthropoids
Germany and Spain were interpreted, transmitted, and translated into Latin there.
The increasing prominence of the topic during the Renaissance demonstrates the
growing emphasis on activity at the expense of contemplation that, according to
Dame Frances A. Yates, is characteristic of this period. Although I have already
dealt in other studies with the constellation of ideas known as the Golem, it is
pertinent to return to the topic because of the important role this matter played in
kabbalistic traditions found in Italy.
Since its inception in the Middle Ages, kabbalistic literature was preoccupied
with the topic of man and his role in creating another man. This topic involved not
just natural procreation, the most important commandment in rabbinic Judaism
and in Kabbalah, 2 but also other forms of activity related to the isomorphic struc-
ture of man. One of the most important of them was known as the Golem, in fact
a much later designation for an artificial man created from dust and water, over
which combinations of letters and divine names were recited. There were many
recipes describing the process in detail, most of them stemming from either
Ashkenazi Hasidic traditions or from northern France. 3 Their common denomi-
nator was the centrality of the linguistic facets of the ceremony, namely recitations
of combinations of letters, and the divergences among the various recipes demon-
strate that they reflected earlier traditions, some of which can be dated to before
the twelfth century. 4 This form of creation was reminiscent, according to some
texts, of the creation of Adam by God. 5 Abraham Abulafia knew some of these
recipes, as we shall see below, and we may assume that Spanish Kabbalists knew
them also but that, unlike Abulafia, they were indifferent to this type of activity.
The single exception is a discussion found in the so-called circle of the Book of
Contemplation.
Another form of anthropoid, produced while using a variety of materials, espe-
cially metals, though not linguistic operations, was connected to the Hermetic
production of the statues in which the gods were induced in order to foretell the
future. Evidence of this phenomenon is found in early- fourteenth-century Castilian
texts written by Jewish philosophers close to the thought of R Abraham ibn Ezra,
and in an anonymous manuscript to which we shall devote the next chapter.
Theosophical Kabbalists in Spain, as well as ecstatic ones in Italy, were not inclined
to this way of thought.
The main line of Kabbalah as it developed in the Iberian peninsula was the
theosophical-theurgical one. It regarded the Supernal Man, 'Adam 'Elyon, as the
comprehensive symbol for the structure of the ten sefirot and envisioned the main
purpose of kabbalistic activity as the restoration of the harmonious relationship
within this dynamic structure, especially the union between the ninth and the
tenth sefirot, envisioned as male and female respectively. The effect of human
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religious activity on high, what I describe as theurgy, was understood as related to
the isomorphic structure of the human, basically the male, body and the supernal
one. Commandments performed by the human body affected the corresponding
divine manifestations on high. According to some early kabbalistic views, reli-
gious activity kept the divine structure stable by drawing down from the highest
realm the influx that counteracted the natural drive of the sefirot to return to their
pristine place, before the beginning of the process of emanation. As such, the
theosophical-theurgical Kabbalist envisioned his activity as keeping the anthropo-
morphic structure on high in its integral display, which was also the ideal situ-
ation for the mundane world. According to a doctrine found in a theosophical
school related to R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, an anthropomorphic structure
was found not only in the sefirotic realm but also in an even higher structure,
called the supernal or inner sefirot, or tzahtzahot, which was part of the Infinite, the
'Ein So/. 6 This higher, static, and pure divine structure was thought to be referred to
in the most anthropomorphic expressions in the Bible and as the hidden meaning
of the book Shi'ur Qomah. This development continued for some generations of
Kabbalists in Spain and then in Safed, and testifies to the will of some Kabbalists
to describe the highest level in the divine sphere by using anthropomorphic termi-
nology. This is the case even in discussions by important Kabbalists such as the
sixteenth-century Safedian paragon of Kabbalah, R Moshe Cordovero. In Lurianic
Kabbalah, anthropomorphic structures became even more important, but now
the task of the Kabbalist was understood as uplifting the divine sparks that fell
from the Primordial Man, 'Adam Qadmon. Because of the primal catastrophe, the
shattered anthropomorphic structure should be repaired by performance of
the commandments.
Despite differences about the role of the supernal anthropomorphic structures,
the various theosophical-theurgical schools of Kabbalah agreed that a divine,
spiritual, and external anthropos provided the clue to understanding the real aim
of Judaism. Adherents to the theosophical-theurgical model in Italy included
R Menahem Recanati, R Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano, R Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim,
and R Yehudah Hayyat. In their writings, as in those of many like-minded
Kabbalists outside Italy, ecstatic experiences related to the Golem or construc-
tions of material anthropoi — whether of dust or of metals — are either absent or are
presented as inferior modes of religious activity. This distribution of topics among
the various kabbalistic literatures reflects the deep phenomenological divide
among the various kabbalistic schools and models, and in some cases among
geographical centers. In this chapter I want to survey the views found in ecstatic
Kabbalah, and their reverberations in the Renaissance; in the next I shall trace the
metallic astromagical anthropoid's journey from Spain to Italy.
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2. Abraham Abulafia and the Spiritualized Golem
Among Kabbalists born in Spain, Abraham Abulafia paid unique attention to the
topic of the creation of an artificial man. Although the topic was widely written
about in northern Europe, where it took a variety of forms, the few Kabbalists who
addressed it in Spain regarded both the created man and the human creator as
symbols of divine creation. 7 Detailed techniques for creating the Golem reached
Abulafia from Ashkenazi sources, as we may infer from a manuscript found now in
the library in Parma. 8 Abulafia adapted these techniques by formulating a way for
reaching an experience of ecstasy via an anthropomorphic vision. 9 He conceived
the preparation and proper formation of the inner man, the psyche, as the main
purpose of those techniques. Seeing these techniques as aids to self-regeneration,
a new birth into an intellectual world, Abulafia and his students expressed reserva-
tions about the importance, or in some cases the possibility, of a material creation,
whereas the Ashkenazi masters assumed the possibility of such a creation.
Nevertheless the ecstatic Kabbalists took the techniques for creating the Golem
from Ashkenazi sources and applied them for reaching ecstasy.
Some of the earliest dated Ashkenazi recipes are extant in manuscripts copied
in the 1280s in Rome, and described in chapter 7 above. If my assumptions about
the transmission of these manuscripts are correct, Abulafia brought the originals
from Barcelona, together with two Ashkenazi commentaries on Sejer Yetzirah. The
creation of the Golem was often related in the Ashkenazi sources to this late-
antique book. Although we may assume that these recipes first arrived in Catalonia
from the Rhineland together with other pieces of Ashkenazi esoterica, and influ-
enced the nascent ecstatic Kabbalah there, this was not the only route by which
Ashkenazi recipes reached Kabbalists active in Italy. In a codex now housed at the
University of Cambridge, containing three different recipes for creating Golems,
we read: "All these matters were found in codexes [quntresim] that were brought by
the sage R Reuven, when he came from the land of Ashkenaz. And this [recipe] he
found in another codex." 10 Immediately afterward the copyist mentions another
book, lent to him by "the Ashkenazi [living] in Venice." 11 Unfortunately, it is hard
to date these short notes or to identify R Reuven. I wonder if we may identify him
with R Reuven Tzarfati, discussed later in this chapter. However, it is evident that
the material on the Golem brought from Ashkenaz should be added to what was
already found in other codexes that may antedate the arrival of his material. In any
case, it seems that in Italy, esoteric Ashkenazi material arrived both from Spanish
sources, presumably Barcelona as brought by Abulafia, and from Ashkenaz
directly. In this context I would like to mention also the existence of a short discus-
sion of combinations of letters and an artificial figure in a late-thirteenth-century
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manuscript that reflects some ideas close to R. Moshe Azriel ben Yehudah
ha-Darshan, extant in the Angelica Library in Rome. 12
In an anonymous fragment found in the Parma manuscript, whose affinity to
Abulafia's major mystical handbook, Hayyei ha-'OIam ha-Ba', is undeniable, we
find the following statements:
And the fourth way is built up in a solid manner, as it is designed beforehand
in the twenty-four circles and in its proper vocalization, in order to receive
the influx of wisdom and [the act of] formation [yetzirah] too. . . .The end of
the end 13 aims to create a creature [livro' beriyah] 14 and to recite over each and
every thing. And the essential thing is to be acquainted with the pronuncia-
tion of its recitation, since each and every letter is to be recited in one breath,
as the spirit of man is going out from the person who recites, loudly. And he
shall recite in a remote and pure place, where there is no one [else], 15 and
he will succeed. 16
The twenty-four circles are an essential part of the mystical technique in
Abulafia's Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba'. They are related to recitations of combinations
of three units of three letters found in these circles. This recitation is described as
loud and emphatic, as if the soul of the reciter is going out. I assume that this
detail is related to the view found in Ashkenazi sources, according to which the
acts of recitation represent the externalization of human vitality, and its insertion
within the brute matter that is vivified by this vitality. 17 In a departure from the
earlier recipes, Abulafia seems to be the first to emphasize the importance of
solitude for the success of the ceremony.
There are two cardinal themes in the passage above: the reception of wisdom,
expressed in philosophical terminology, "the influx of wisdom"; and the making
of a creature. Although the nature of the linkage between the reception of the
influx and the creative act is not specified, the order of their mention may indicate
that wisdom must exist before someone attains to the stage of creating a creature.
This sequence occurs also in another description of creating a creature, and the
author is Abraham Abulafia himself: in his Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba' Abulafia formu-
lates one of the most innovative interpretations of the meaning of the anthropoid
in Jewish mysticism, which will reverberate in other authors:
The deed that is greatest of all deeds is to make souls, [this being] the secret:
"And the souls they made in Haran" [Genesis 12:5]. l8 God has made man,
literally, "in the likeness [bi-demut] of God He made him" [Genesis 5:1]. And
this deed is, according to our opinion, the culmination of all good deeds.
Therefore, every wise person ought to make souls much more than he ought
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to make bodies, since the duty of making bodies is [solely] intended to make
souls, and thereby man will imitate his maker, since the prophet said on
the issue of the deed of God: "But the spirit and the soul which I have made
should faint before me" [Isaiah 57:16]. This is the reason why the wise
person, who comprehends something from the intelligibilia, must hand
down as a true tradition what he has comprehended in accordance with his
strength. 19
Like his Ashkenazi predecessors, Abulafia exploits the classical interpretation
of the verse on Abraham and Sarah's activity in Haran as a spiritual illumination of
the gentiles, understood as creation of their souls. In the biblical and rabbinic
texts, the soul, nefesh, means a person, thus implying that the two forefathers did
not create those persons for the first time but only instructed them. This under-
standing seems to be present also in the recipe of R. Eleazar of Worms, which was
probably known to Abulafia. 20 However, in many other medieval texts the term
"soul" stood for the spiritual aspect of man, and this misreading was very helpful
for Abulafia: the body of the gentiles was understood as vivified by "creating
souls" and instilling them in the body. However, the real meaning of this term in
Abulafia's thought needs elaboration. Subscribing to Aristotelian psychology as
formulated by Maimonides, Abulafia assumes that the soul is just the vital and
motoric functions of the body, which are congenital and cannot be introduced
from outside; the soul is part and parcel of the bodily faculties. For this Kabbalist,
as for Maimonides, it is the intellectual dimension of man that matters, and the
intellectual forms come from outside, from the Agent Intellect. Either from the
emanation of this cosmic Intellect, or from the teaching of a master or from read-
ing a book, the intellectual forms accumulate in the human potential faculty that
will become the intellect in actu. According to the Maimonidean theory, this
intellect is the real man. For Abulafia, as for Maimonides, creating the soul
amounts to informing someone with correct thoughts; hence the mention of the
influx of wisdom in the quotation above. It is the teacher, not the magician, who
creates the real Golem. The teacher induces the highest spiritual faculty in man
and thus creates him in a profound sense. In a way, the ancient Abraham, who,
according to rabbinic interpretations, converted gentiles to monotheism, becomes
a prototype for the medieval Abraham Abulafia: both become propagandists for a
spiritual message, which in Abulafia's thought has also a redemptive dimension.
I assume that his instruction of his students amounted, in his opinion, to creating
them intellectually. In doing so he resorted to Aristotelian psychology. Abulafia's
dissemination of Kabbalah, discussed in chapter 3, may also be understood from
this perspective.
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Nevertheless there is an exception to this Aristotelian psychological scenario of
inseminating the student with mystical techniques and ideas in order to create his
intellect. In his Sitrei Torah Abulafia writes, in a rather Neoplatonic tenor: "The
soul is a portion of the Divinity, and within it there are 231 gates [Yesh R'al], and it
is called the 'congregation of Israel,' which collects and gathers into herself the
entire community, under its power of intellect, which is called the 'supernal
congregation of Israel,' the mother of providence, being the cause of the provi-
dence, the intermediary between us and God. This is the Torah, the result of the
effluence of the twenty-two letters. Know that all the limbs of your body are
combined by the combination of the forms of the letters with each other." 21
The "congregation of Israel" stands, as in Abulafia's allegorical understanding
of many other Jewish traditional terms, not for concrete entities but for the Agent
Intellect, namely the cosmic spiritual power that governs the major processes in
the sublunar world, in which all the forms are found. 22 The attainment of an
experience of belonging or adhering to that comprehensive entity depends upon
combinations of letters, the 231 gates. This is conceived to be the ultimate
message of the Torah: the transformation of the human potential intellect into an
actual one by combining and reciting letters. This is but another form of defining
Jewish particularist terminology in more universal terms; in chapter 6 we saw
another example of a sharp redefinition of Judaism in this Kabbalist, when he used
the term "Jew" in referring to someone who confesses the divine name.
This is the real "good deed" mentioned in the recipe above: it is true for the
individual who does it, and for those who are taught to do it. The combination of
letters is conceived also as explaining the emergence of the body, thus creating the
thesis that both body and mind, or soul, emerge as the result of combinations of
letters. It seems to me that we have here a certain elaboration on the theories
related to the creation of the anthropoid by recitations of combinations of letters.
Abulafia does not oppose the creation of an artificial man, as we learn from an
anonymous text found in the Parma manuscript mentioned earlier, which I attrib-
ute to this Kabbalist. There some form of material creation occurs, although what
is important is the apparition of a form, demut, rather than the construction of a
body. 23 However, he prefers a more spiritualistic understanding of the topic,
which he considers to be creative par excellence. In the passage quoted above,
corporeal procreation is compared to the intellectual one. However, we may infer
from his formulation in the passage from Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba' that the creation
of an anthropoid that is a moving body, which is soulless, is — spiritually
speaking — a meaningless activity; and in any case it is evidently inferior to the
creation of the intellect of the mystic himself, by his reception of the intellectual
influx as the result of the combination of the letters or the spiritual direction of his
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masters. If, nevertheless, the creation of the creature and the appearance of the
image are posited at a higher level than the perception of the influx, which is a
spiritual creation, it seems that we must understand the vision of the creature and
image as basically a spiritual experience.
This reading of Abulafia is fostered by the occurrence of the term demut also in
the passage from Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', where its meaning is explicitly a spiritual
one, since it functions as a synonym to the souls made by Abraham and Sarah.
Moreover, Abulafia repeatedly uses this term in order to refer to the imaginative
faculty, which is active in the ecstatic experience. Indeed, in his Sefer ha-'Ot he pre-
sents demut not only as an inner force, but also as one connected to the divine name,
which is inscribed in the inner constitution of man: "And I looked and I saw there
[in the heart] my image [tzalmi] and my likeness [demuri] moving in two paths, in a
vision in the form [bi-temunat] of two Tetragrammata [Tcrci KW]." 24 Here the image
is conspicuously presented as an object of a vision, whose affinity to the divine
name is obvious. In fact, the two Tetragrammata amount to 52, an important figure
in Abulafia — following R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo — who interpreted this figure as
pointing to ben, "son." 25 According to Abulafia, one's real son is the intellectual
development that transforms his potential or hylic intellect into an actuated one. 26
According to Abulafia's terminology, the image, tzelem, stands for the intellect,
while the likeness, demut, stands for the imagination, dimyon. With this clue in
mind, let us consider a passage from Abulafia's Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba':
Whoever pursues the lore handed down to us in accordance with the [divine]
Name, in order to use it in operations of every kind for the glory of God, he
is sanctifying the Name [of God]. But if he pursues the lore of the name in
order to exert influence upon corporeal matters, useful for richness or
length of life, or for [birth of] sons and daughters, or for love and hate, or in
order to kill an enemy, and if he aims, while doing this, at his own glory or
the glory of men or his benefit or theirs, without any true reason and not for
the glory of God, and he does it before he has received from God an influx or
[divine] spirit by the Tetragrammaton, even if he expresses by his mouth or
things in his heart that he recites the name for the glory of God, it is not so,
and even if the operation is performed by the recitation of the awesome
name, this man is wicked and a sinner, who defiles the name of God. 27
First and foremost we may discern also here the hierarchy between the possible
corporeal attainments and the spiritual ones, presented as superior. The focus
here is not the Golem, but the magical art that someone may perform by means of
the divine names. Abulafia rejects the magic use of the divine names in favor
of using them for a spiritual purpose, as part of the recitation that is a component
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of the technique. As in many other cases, Abulafia disagrees here with the Hasidei
Ashkenaz masters, from whom he inherited substantial parts of his techniques,
integrating them into a larger structure or technique intended to induce an experi-
ence and not to benefit anything material. In any case, the sequence of wisdom
first and then action is also evident in this passage.
It should be mentioned that recipes concerning the creation of the Golem
are extant in the manuscripts that were copied by Menahem ben Benjamin in the
1280s, whose content reflects the involvement of Abulafia in bringing some of the
treatises to Italy. 28
3. The Anonymous SeferNer 'Elohim
Let me now discuss the views on the creation of the artificial man in the writings
of some authors who were especially close to the theories of Abulafia, and who can
be considered as belonging to ecstatic Kabbalah.
An outstanding attempt to counter the magical implications of the discussions
in Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin, where a rabbinic figure, Rava, created a Golem
and sent it to his colleague R. Zeira, is to be found in the anonymous treatise Ner
'Elohim, written in the circle of Abraham Abulafia. The anonymous Kabbalist envi-
sions the essential activity described by Sefer Yetzirah as the combination of letters
that culminates in the attainment of prophecy, namely an ecstatic experience.
Immediately afterward he writes:
Do not believe the craziness of those who study Sefer Yetzirah in order to cre-
ate a three-year-old calf, since those who strive to do it are themselves calves.
And if Rava created a man and he returned to his dust, there is therein a
secret, and it is not the plain meaning of the issue. And he who did so on the
eve of the day of Sabbath did it for a great secret reason, and the wise shall
not be like a simpleton, who does not possess the scales of reason to weigh
the truth by them, and the stupid man will believe everything . . . and if the
sages said it, he shall know the secret of their saying so, [since] they spoke
in parables and enigmas. See those stupid persons who believed the issue of
creation on its plain sense, but did not want to believe that if a man creates
many souls, lasting forever, it [this spiritual creation] is more elevated than
the creation of bodies, generated for an hour and corrupted immediately. 29
This is one of the most outspoken critiques of the customary understanding of
the classical Jewish texts. Material creation, of the world or of a man, is just a cover
whose meaning escapes the vulgus. The assumption that the ancient Jewish sages
spoke in parables is part of the Maimonidean view accepted by the Abulafian school,
which followed an allegorical approach, as we saw in chapter 5. The view that there
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were secrets in the legends of the sages was common in medieval Jewish philosophy
as well as in theosophical Kabbalah. However, the view that the plain meaning of the
ancient texts was problematic was uncommon among the theosophical Kabbalists,
whereas the theology of some of the ecstatic Kabbalists, influenced as they were by
Maimonides, was more sensitive to the discrepancy between the ancient Jewish
magical-mythical theologoumena and medieval philosophical theology.
The anonymous ICabbalist presents corporeal creation as a story that only fools
will understand literally, whereas the illuminati are able to penetrate beyond the
plain sense of the text to its inner meaning. Presumably this meaning is that
the corporeal creation is temporal, this being the intention of the command given to
man to return to his dust after he reached R. Zeira, in the Sanhedrin. We may assume
that this ecstatic ICabbalist interpreted the absence of the power of speech as a symp-
tom of the insignificance of this creature. For him, as for Abulafia in the passage
quoted above from Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', only the mental creation is religiously
meaningful and everlasting. Therefore, the talmudic legend does not refer, accord-
ing to this anonymous ICabbalist, to a mystical process 30 but to the inferiority of
material activity by comparison with the activity of Abraham, who created "souls."
We must separate the anonymous ICabbalist's positive attitude toward the activity
described in Sefer Yetzirah from his apparently negative attitude toward the plain
meaning of the talmudic passage. This passage in Ner 'Elohim seems to be the only
place in the literature of ecstatic Kabbalah where the corporeal creation of the artifi-
cial man is explicitly presented in a stringently disparaging way. However, we can
infer from this passage that at the end of the thirteenth century there were persons
in Italy or Sicily who believed that the study of Sefer Yetzirah was intended to achieve
merely corporeal goals. Since this evidence occurs in a polemical context, we must
be cautious before accepting it at as a clear-cut proof of the purely magical attitude
and practice of Sefer Yetzirah by the author's contemporaries; however, the existence
of other evidence concurring with this text allows an acceptance of this evidence as
reliable. Both in Abulafia and in most of his followers, the clash between the talmu-
dic magical attainment and the Maimonidean critique of magic is clear. This clash,
to be sure, was evident in many centers of Jewish culture, but it was never so strong
as in the writings of those Kabbalists who were close to the techniques used to create
the Golem by the Ashkenazi masters, though they took those techniques in a spiri-
tual, esoteric direction. However, I would like to emphasize that language remained
a major technique, and this devotion to language is part and parcel of kabbalistic
views. Either as part of a magical recipe or of a mystical technique, the prominent
presence of linguistic elements should be highlighted as an attempt to maintain
the centrality of some earlier traditions in intellectual milieus in which other, more
mentally oriented ideals became influential.
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4. R. Nathan ben Sa'adyah Harar's View of the Golem
In other writings, apparently later ones, Abulafia and some of his followers
subscribed to an understanding of a spiritual Golem as the creation of an alter ego
that reveals itself to the operator. This experience was induced by the use of tech-
niques identical with those employed in creating the Golem. Thus, a spiritualiza-
tion of this magical topic as if dealing with a mystical experience took place. While
some theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists regarded the anthropos as a divinity, and
conceived the performance of commandments as a way of repairing the supernal
realm, the ecstatic Kabbalists intellectualized the Golem by transforming it into
an imaginary appearance that revealed an intellectual content to the mystic, some
form of the perfect nature of someone.
In the ecstatic kabbalistic literature there is also another important treatment
of the Golem theme. It takes as its starting point a medieval story in which two
other figures, ben Sira and leremiah, are involved in creating a Golem. This
twelfth-century treatment, to which we shall return in section 9 below, was
discussed in a long passage by R Yitzhaq of Acre, which we shall examine in the
next section. But first, in order to understand better the claim of R Yitzhaq, let us
consider a passage on the Golem found in the writings of a Kabbalist who cer-
tainly influenced R. Yitzhaq. This was R Nathan ben Sa'adyah Harar, a Kabbalist
who flourished in the 1280s in Messina, Sicily, where he studied for some years
with Abraham Abulafia before reportedly visiting the land of Israel. R. Yitzhaq of
Acre, who in my opinion was his student, quoted him as follows: "And if she [the
soul] deserves to cleave to the Divine Intellect, happy is she, since she has returned
to her source and root, and she is called, literally, Divine Intellect. And that person
is called the Man of God, that is to say, a divine man, creating worlds. 31 Behold,
Rava created a man, but did not yet ['adaiyn] see fit to give him a speaking soul.
And you have to understand that since the soul of man has reached a degree of the
supernal degrees, his soul governs everything below this degree, and there is no
need to elaborate upon this issue, which is an axiom for every learned person." 32
It is reasonable to assume that the case of Rava's creation of a man offers an
example of a degree that can be transcended by certain persons, the divine men,
who are able to rule over everything inferior to this degree, by cleaving to the high-
est degree. This reading is corroborated by the word "yet," 'adaiyn, which implies
the possibility of surpassing the achievement of the talmudic master. If so, the
man of God or the divine man can, at least implicitly, according to this passage,
induce a speaking soul in the Golem, provided he has achieved a prior union with
the Divine Intellect. A perfect Golem may, therefore, be created by a perfect man
who is in a state of perfect mystical union, namely in a state of union with the
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Divine Intellect. According to this passage, and following the talmudic discussion
in the Sanhedrin, the perfect man, like the rabbinic Tzaddiqim, is capable of creating
not only an anthropoid but also worlds. R. Nathan himself was not interested in
magical performance, although he was aware of this aspect of Kabbalah." The
paramount importance of the contact between the mystic and the divine intellect
is reminiscent of a view of Abraham Abulafia discussed above, that the process of
creating a creature is preceded by the reception of the influx of wisdom. In both
cases, intellectual perfection is considered a prerequisite to the creative process.
Let me discuss another instance that requires union with the divine as preced-
ing the creation of an artificial man. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, an
anonymous commentator on the Bahir passage on Rava's creation of the anthro-
poid in the Talmud wrote: " 'They [the righteous] created the world': the explana-
tion is that they were creating worlds since [or after] they cleaved to God, namely
to the [attribute of] Righteousness, [which is] the foundation of the world." 34
I assume that the Kabbalist understands the powers that the operators achieve as
the result of the cleaving of the human righteous to the supernal righteous, the
sefirah Yesod. This supernal hypostasis, the divine power Yesod, is related to the
world, either as its foundation or by dint of its governance.
5. R YlTZHAQBEN SAMUEL OF ACRE'S PERFECT GOLEM
Let us now examine a vitally important text written by R. Yitzhaq ben Samuel of
Acre, one of the most interesting Kabbalists at the turn of the thirteenth century.
The following passage reports a discussion that took place in a circle of Kabbalists
close to or identical with the ecstatic Kabbalah of Abulafia. R. Yitzhaq of Acre was
presumably part, at least for a time, of a group related to this Kabbalah, perhaps in
Sicily, and was influenced by some of its views. 35 In this school a greater interest in
the tradition of the Golem is discernible than in any other kabbalistic school in the
thirteenth century. One of the members of this group was R. Nathan ben Sa'adyah
Harar, mentioned above. In what seems to me to be one of the most interesting
passages dealing with the creation of the Golem in the entire kabbalistic literature,
R Yitzhaq follows the affinity between human perfection of an intellectual brand,
and the creation of a perfect Golem:
Once ... I, the youngster, 36 was sitting in the company of advanced
students, lovers ofwisdom. One of them opened his mouth and asked me as
follows: "What is the difference between Creation [Beriy'ah] and Formation
[Yetzirah]?" I told him: "Why don't you ask also why our ancestor Abraham
called his book [by the name] Yetzirah, which consists of wondrous deeds,
by means of which Rava created a man, and sent it to R. Hiyya 37 and
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R Hosha'yiah. A three-year-old calf was created each time before the begin-
ning of the Sabbath, and they ate it during the day of Sabbath, and Jeremiah
and ben Sira created from it a speaking, wise, and intelligent man, as I have
explained above, 38 and why did he [Abraham] not call it the Book ojTSeriy'ah?"
And he [the student] was not able [to answer me] , and none of them
answered me, since they did not know what it [the answer?] was. But I, the
young, while I was speaking, saw the correct rationale for it, which is as
follows: You already know the secret of the [letter] Yod 39 of the 'ABYA', and the
secret of the [letter] Bet. 40 Since the majority of sons of man have no power
to endow a speaking soul, a fortiori an intellective soul, on the matter shaped
in the form of an animal or a beast or a bird or a fish or a reptile, not even in
the form of man, [using the capacity of] the Book of Yetzirah, but only the
animal and appetitive soul, as our sages said: "Rava created a man, and he
sent it to R Zeira, etc.," the book was called Sejer Yetzirah but not the Book of
Beriy'ah. The reason is that the animal and appetitive soul, which perishes
with the death of the body, when the combination of the four elements is
undone, stems from the intermediary world, which is the Yod of 'ABYA'. But
the secret of the speaking [and] intellective soul is from the supernal world,
which is the [letter] Bet of 'ABYA'. By saying the majority [of men] and not all
[men] I intended to exclude Jeremiah the prophet, the disciple of Moses our
master, peace on him, and ben Sira 41 and all those similar to them, who are
very few, who attained a divine perfection, [so as] to create an animal, speak-
ing as an intellective [being]. And if you shall argue that all the prophets . . .
were the disciples of Moses, our master, peace on him, so why did you men-
tion Jeremiah in particular as a disciple of Moses? The answer is that you
must pursue the Kabbalists so that they may explain to you the secret of the
verse "The Lord thy God will raise up to thee a prophet from the midst of
thee, of thy brethren, like me, to him you shall hearken" [Deuteronomy
18:15], ar, d then you will surely understand my intention. However, con-
cerning Jeremiah and ben Sira alone I have received [a tradition] that they
drew downward a speaking soul from the root of Bet of 'ABYA', that is, the
'Alef of 'ABYA', by dint of their great degree and the perfection of their souls
being able to [perform] this wondrous deed. The reason is that their degree
reached thatofMetatron, the Prince of the Face, and San[dalfon]. 42
R Yitzhaq of Acre presents the act of creation of the Golem in the framework of
his peculiar kabbalistic Weltanschauung, which consists of the view that there are
four worlds. The highest one, that of 'Atzilut, is the world of emanation, referred to
by R Yitzhaq in the first 'A of the 'ABYA' acronym. The next one is the world of
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Beriy'ah, namely Creation, which is the world of the Divine Chariot, hinted at by the
letter Bet. The third, the world of Yetzirah, meaning Formation, is the world of the
angels, and corresponds to the letter Yod. Finally, the world of 'Asiyah, the lower
world, is to be understood as the world of making. 43 The discussion of the Golem
is focused upon the capacity of some mystics to induce the animal and appetitive
soul into matter. This low soul stems from the world of Yetzirah, this being the
reason, according to R. Yitzhaq, that Abraham gave his book the name Yetzirah.
This possibility of conferring the lower soul is conceived of as undisputable for a
fair range of persons, including the talmudic figures. However, we learn from the
passage above that a higher spiritual faculty can be induced by the very few, spe-
cifically Jeremiah the prophet, ben Sira, and "those similar to them." Consequendy,
a small elite has access to the higher world, that of Beriy'ah, Creation, being able to
draw down the speaking and rational soul. However, the Kabbalist assumes that
those few may be able to reach even the world of Atzilut, as the words "Bet of 'ABYA',
which is the Aleph of 'ABYA'" imply. If this is so, R. Yitzhaq asserts, then it is pos-
sible to create a Golem that includes elements from all of the three highest worlds,
and so it also seems reasonable to assume that even elements from the lowest
world, 'Asiyah, can supply the matter of the Golem. This passage illustrates the
transformation of the magical practice by its reinterpretation within a theosophi-
cal structure, which includes also the ten sefirot and their reverberations in the
four worlds.
The assumption that man can create by using elements from all four cosmic
worlds is tantamount to the divine act of the creation of Adam. In other words, the
passage above is an interesting replica of the Genesis discussion of the creation of
man, as R. Yitzhaq of Acre understood it. So, for example, we read in his commen-
tary on the kabbalistic secrets included in the Pentateuch, Mei'rat 'Einayyim: "The
secret of the creation of man [refers to] the speculative soul [ha-neshamah ha-
hakhamah], which stands forever. And the secret of his formation [refers to] the
animal soul, which does not stand forever. . . . And emanation and creation are
more spiritual than formation." 44
This quotation aptly encapsulates important elements from the ecstatic kab-
balistic doctrine of the creation of the Golem. Emanation stands for the highest of
the worlds; then comes creation, and only then formation: we have here the three
higher worlds of the four mentioned in the longer passage from this Kabbalist.
The implication of R Yitzhaq's view is, however, more radical than it appears
from a prima facie reading. The assumption that the two masters were able to
induce the spiritual element from the world of emanation implies that the magi-
cally created man has the highest spiritual capacity, which is not to be found, auto-
matically, even in a normally created man. According to some Kabbalists, the
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highest soul was an achievement obtainable by a mystical regimen uitae, while
the conclusion that the man created by Jeremiah and ben Sira was endowed with
the highest spiritual soul, characteristic of a mystic, would be too far-reaching.
The sublime status of their creation was undeniable in comparison to the views of
other authors who rejected the possibility that the Golem could even speak.
What seems to be implicit here is a historiosophy of the creation of the anthro-
poid: the earlier masters, Jeremiah and his alleged son Sira, created a perfect man,
speaking and intelligent, while the later masters created entities that were closer to
animals. This decline of generations is part of a wider historiosophy of this Kabbalist,
who envisioned the period between late antiquity and the late twelfth century as one
during which the Jews did not possess knowledge of the true God. This claim is not
original; it is found already in a passage by the early-thirteenth-century Kabbalist
R. Ezra of Gerona. In both cases, the emergence of a new theology or theosophy
among the Kabbalists invited the observation that before their time, Jewish thinkers
ignored the precise details of the true theosophical doctrine. 45 This assertion does
not imply that the respective Kabbalists innovated the theosophies they backed. This
is certainly the case with the theosophy of ten sefirot as found in the writings of
R. Ezra of Gerona, who was preceded by his master R. Yitzhaq the Blind. In my opin-
ion, the situation with R. Yitzhaq of Acre is similar, although the evidence is less
explicit. He, too, inherited a theosophical theory that was previously unknown: that
of the four cosmic worlds. I assume that he adopted, and perhaps adapted, this
theory from sources with which R. Nathan ben Sa'adyah Harar was acquainted. It is
in the collection of the kabbalistic traditions compiled by R. Yitzhaq of Acre that the
term 'ABYA' occurs for the first time. Since R Yitzhaq states clearly in the long pas-
sage above that he received a tradition related to causing the descent of the sublime
soul, I assume that he conceived his discussion as retrieving the understanding of
the creation of the Golem as found in the most accomplished Kabbalists: ben Sira
and Jeremiah. Indeed, in an interesting discussion dealing with Plato and Jeremiah,
R. Yitzhaq uses the expression Qabbalat Yermiyahu, the Kabbalah of Jeremiah. 46 Thus
we may describe R. Yitzhaq of Acre's approach as combining the views of R Nathan
ben Sa'adyah, who emphasizes the importance of the basically intellectual trans-
formation of the operator as a requirement for magical activity, with the Jeremiah-
Ben Sira tradition as found in the Commentary on the Secret of the Tetragrammaton, which
we shall deal with in more detail in section g below.
This adoption and adaptation opens up new possibilities for reaching the high-
est realm of the divine through both the mystical and the magical attainments of
the Jewish masters: they are capable not only of cleaving to the Tin SoJ, but also
of operating on the intradivine structure by drawing down power from the world
of emanation to the lower worlds.
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Elsewhere R. Yitzhaq compares the ways in which the anthropoid was created:
Rava created it without any utterance, whereas Jeremiah and Ben Sira did it
by resorting to an utterance, Ma'amar. 47 Here the influence of the anonymous
kabbalistic passage discussed above is conspicuous: the interdiction on creating
the Golem has been obliterated. The early anonymous discussions about the cre-
ation of the Golem, followed by the interdiction on creating it in later discussions,
are transformed in Kabbalah into an unambiguously positive attitude toward
the operations related to the Golem. R. Yitzhaq's very assumption that a perfect
anthropoid can be created implicitly produces the assumption that it is licit to do
so. Thus in 'Otzar Hayyim he writes: "You should know that a certain matter does
not lose its plain sense. Indeed, because the true Kabbalist, [acquainted with] mat-
ters of the names of the Holy One blessed be He, and their permutations, is able to
permute and to revolve in order to invoke so as to [obtain] his will, and is able
to combine a name within another name [Shem ba-Shem] , 4S letter with letter, word
with word, he is able to create heaven and earth and their hosts." 49
I see here a polemic against the negative attitude of the ecstatic Kabbalists,
especially the formulation found in the anonymous Sefer Ner 'Elohim. In contrast to
Abraham Abulafia, whose allegorical thought gravitated to the centrality of the
mental experience, R. Yitzhaq rejected the substitution of the plain sense of creat-
ing the Golem in favor of another, more sublime approach and offered the most
complex theory of creating the Golem in kabbalistic literature. 50 It is plausible that
his appropriation of ecstatic Kabbalah, and his reaction against it, has something
to do with his possible presence in Sicily.
6. R. Reuven Tzarfati's Golem
The other pertinent discussion of the Golem comes from the fourteenth-century
Kabbalist R Reuven Tzarfati, whose affinities to Abulafia we examined in
chapter n. Apparently drawing upon Abulafia's commentary on the Guide of the
Perplexed, he wrote: "The power of the Ineffable Name [of seventy-two letters]
stems from the three verses [Exodus 14:19-21] that originate with [the sefirah]
Hesed, [since] out of Hesed the world was created. 51 And whoever is acquainted
with them in a complete way has the capability to make a creature and to link the
composed [entities] 52 and will comprehend what is worthwhile to be compre-
hended in potentia, and it will turn to be in actu, and this is the ultimate perfection
of man, who has to be acquainted with this knowledge, like Rava, who created a
man. And the other sages of our generation comprehended this divine wisdom." 5 '
This passage presents a strong case for regarding the act of creation, rather
than contemplation, as the ultimate perfection, although it also implies the impor-
tance of actualization of the human mind. In this respect it is reminiscent of
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Abulafia's discussion, quoted above, of the best of the deeds in the context of cre-
ating souls. Like his predecessor, Tzarfati refers to the divine name of seventy-two
letters, extracted from the letters of Exodus 14:19-21, as the instrument of both
comprehension and creation. 54 Especially significant for our purposes is the
assumption that unknown medieval sages, contemporaries of Tzarfati, possessed
the technique of creating a creature. This observation may have something to do
with Tzarfati's French background, indicated by his very name (in Hebrew,
"France" is Tzarfar), or perhaps with the interest in the concept of the Golem in
Italy. It may also have to do with the fact that Italian manuscripts are the most
important sources of Golem recipes.
7. YOHANAN ALEMANNO'S GOLEMS: ECLECTICISM AND SYNTHESIS
Although the early medieval material dealing with the Golem was committed to
writing and composed at least in part in Germany and France, Jews in Italy played
a crucial role in preserving and disseminating it in Renaissance Florentine circles.
Among them Yohanan Alemanno played an important role . He was well acquainted
with a variety of discussions and recipes dealing with artificial anthropoids.
He drew on the ecstatic kabbalistic texts, on the Hasidei Ashkenaz recipes, on
R Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi's commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, 55 and presumably
was also acquainted with the metallic anthropoid, or at least the book that pre-
served it, as we shall see in the next chapter. His approach to these materials was
creative, involving interpretation of one form of thought by means of another.
This combining of traditions, unparalleled in any other known author, betrays a
deep interest in the question of creation of man in the Renaissance period.
Let me start with a passage that portrays the forefather Abraham as an autodi-
dact. 56 He initially learned for himself the details included in Sefer Yetzirah, and then
achieved the power to create:
he combined [the letters] with one another, and it [the combination]
succeeded [in creating] wondrous [things] , and out of them [he created]
wondrous [things], and he created new creatures [beriy'ot hadashot], which
[possess] an animal soul, like the ancient sages, who created a calf and a
likeness of a man [demut 'Adam], though he did not possess the power of
speech, and he understood that by these letters all the beings were created. 57
This is an important example of learning while doing. The emphasis on the
term demut in this context is reminiscent of the occurrence of this term in some of
Abulafia's related discussions, quoted above. It was only after this stage of creat-
ing "mute things" that Abraham advanced to an ecstatic experience when he
contemplated the supernal world of the sefirot, which was revealed to him in a
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"sudden vision," hashqofah pit'omit. 58 However, this gradation of the creative
moment as preceding the highest mystical experience seems to be a later develop-
ment in Alemanno's thought. Earlier, in his Collectanea, he wrote:
The Account of Creation is the knowledge of the essences of things, wherein
he [the operator] knows the forms [themselves], not only their actions,
since knowledge of the actions is the wisdom of nature, which is known by
speculation, and knowledge of the essences is the wisdom of prophecy, 59
achieved by the sudden vision. And from it, the knowledge of the roots of the
corruptible things is derived wherein he knows the intermingling of those
roots 60 in the sphere of the intellect, also named the sphere of the letters
[gakjal ha-'otiyyot], 61 and he will know how to combine them according to
the lore of Sejer Yetzirah, so that from this knowledge he will know how
to create a creature as Abbaei and Rava did, 62 that they created a three-year-
old calf, as it is said that he 63 was acquainted with the combination of the
letters by which the world was created. 64
Here, knowledge is conceived of not as part of a natural rational development
but as the result of revelation of the roots of the whole cosmos, a revelation that
allows the practical application of this knowledge in the creation of beings.
Alemanno attributes the creative possibilities inherent in the letters not only to their
magical powers, the details of which are transmitted from one sage to another, but
also to the ascent of the mystic to a prophetic vision that enables him to reach the
archetypes appointed over the lower world and to use this knowledge. 65 Mysticism
is now presented as the stage preceding the apex of human achievement, which is
the magical act, in a way reminiscent of the passage by Tzarfati — an author with
whom Alemanno was acquainted — discussed above. Such a conception is reminis-
cent of other descriptions of deuequt, or adherence to the divine, as a stage before the
creation of the Golem. 66 This vision of the creative application of the highest knowl-
edge is entirely consonant with other statements by Alemanno, in which magic is
envisioned as the peak of human development. Thus, when dealing with the
moment of revelation, Alemanno combines elements found in ecstatic Kabbalah,
especially the concept of a "science of prophecy" and the "sphere of letters," with
an Avicennan and Ibn Tufayl's theory of "sudden vision," a form of intuition that is
sometimes also called prophecy, and with a concept of nature. In any case, the
revolving of the cosmic sphere of letters, which are conceived of as creative, is rem-
iniscent of Ibn Tufayl's theory about the emergence of men out of the movements
of the spheres, a view that also had an impact on Marsilio Ficino. 67
The eclectic nature of this enterprise is clear: Alemanno brings together several
different traditions dealing with spiritual attainments, while adding to them the
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more magical aspect of creating something in external nature, the anthropoid. In
his syntheses of the ecstatic and magical traditions, Alemanno is reminiscent of
Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, his Florentine contemporaries. 68
A third discussion of creation via a combination of letters elucidates the
passages above as well as another important issue in Renaissance magic. In the
same Collectanea Alemanno quotes the recipe for creating a Golem by R. Eleazar of
Worms, with a few small variations. This text has been printed and compared with
its various Ashkenazi sources in a recent article by Klaus Herrmann. 69 Here is the
part of Alemanno's version that is pertinent to our discussion:
In [Eleazar's] Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah I found: Whoever studies Sefer
Yetzirah shall clothe himself with pure [clothes], "and you shall have white
clothes always" [Ecclesiastes 9:8]. It is forbidden to study [Sefer Yetzirah]
alone, but [it is necessary to study] together with two or three, as it is writ-
ten: "And the souls they made in Haran" [Genesis 12:5] . He shall take virgin
soil [qarqa' betulah] 70 from a place in the mountains where no one has
plowed. And he shall knead 71 the dust with living water, and he shall make a
body [Golem], and he shall begin to permute the alphabets of 221 gates or of
231 gates with each limb separately with the corresponding letter mentioned
in the book [Sefer Yetzirah] . And the alphabets will be permuted at the begin-
ning, and afterward he shall permute with the vowel A A A A A. And always,
the letter of the [divine] name with them. . . . Afterward, he shall appoint
B and likewise C and each limb with the letter appointed to it. And he shall
do it when he is pure. These are the 221 gates. . . . You shall do so with all
the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, and in the case of each and every
letter you recite you shall combine it, and in the case of each of the letters
that you shall combine with the letter of the divine name, you shall have
36 syllables, because each of the two letters has 36 syllables, 72 and in such a
manner the form [ha-tzurah] will be created swiftly. And if you want to return
it to its dust you shall invert the alphabet, and it [the form] will become dust,
and you shall also return the divine name, and you shall combine each and
every letter with it as I have shown. 73
In this combination of R. Eleazar of Worms's recipe from his Commentary on
Sefer Yetzirah, and the same author's discussion in Sefer ha-Shem, Alemanno pre-
serves an unknown variant of an important Ashkenazi discussion. The presence of
these texts in Florence affords one more example of Alemanno's concern with the
recipes for creating a Golem. He does not comment upon the content of this pas-
sage. But immediately after it he copies an excerpt from a book attributed to
Claudius Ptolemaeus, known as Centiloquium, translated variously in Hebrew as
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Sefer ha-Peri (Book of the Fruit) or Me'ah Dibburim (the Hundred Dicta), along with
the Arabic commentary of Ali ibn Ragel. The spurious quotation from "Ptolemaeus"
runs as follows: "The forms in the world of composition obey the forms of the
spheres. This is why the masters of the talismans draw the forms of the spheres in
order to receive the emanation of the stars in the object they intend to operate
with." 74 The Arab commentator explains, in the text copied by Alemanno, that
there is a close correspondence between the supernal and the terrestrial forms,
and this is the reason why the "masters of the idols 75 brought [down] the efflux of
the stars in those spherical forms and their ascent at the Orient, and at that time
they ornamented their forms with stones, etc." 76 In the margin of this Hermetic
explanation of magic as connected to the efflux of the stars into idols, namely the
statues prepared according to the special features of a certain star, Alemanno
notes: "This is the secret of the world of the letters; 77 they are forms and seals
[namely talismans] [made in order] to collect the supernal and spiritual emana-
tion as the seals collect the emanations of the stars." 78
As against the astral type of magic, based upon material constructions of
idols or statues that correspond to the upper spherical world or planets — a form of
magia naturalis — Alemanno proposes here a Jewish version of magic based upon
the assumption that there is a world higher than the celestial spheres and angels,
consisting of the forms of the creatures and conceived as the "world of the letters,"
or according to other parallels a "world of names," while here below it is possible
to collect the emanation expanding from that reified linguistic world by using
Hebrew letters or names that function as seals and talismans. Since this view is
transcribed immediately after the passage on the Golem by R. Eleazar of Worms,
which deals with creation by combinations of letters, and since the term "world of
the letters" is closely related to the "sphere of the letters" mentioned above in
another text from Alemanno's Collectanea, dealing with creation by means of
Sefer Yetzirah, it is plausible to assume that Alemanno understood the text of
the Ashkenazi author in terms of the astral magic described on the same page.
Such a view was not completely new in Judaism; the Golem had already been inter-
preted in astral terms in the anonymous early-thirteenth-century Sefer ha-Hayyim, 79
and it occurs elsewhere in Alemanno, as we shall see in the next chapter. The medi-
eval technique of creating a Golem is understood here as the Jewish counterpart of
talismanic-astral magic and as being higher than it. In other words, Alemanno
understood the linguistic techniques for creating the Golem as an instrument for
collecting the supernal efflux, after it has been created by means of the letters
conceived as talismanic entities. This positive attitude toward a combination
of letters and astromagic is also apparent in Alemanno's discussions of other
matters. So, for example, in another passage in his Collectanea, quoted in chapter 14,
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he describes the activity of Moses as fully consonant with the attraction of the astral
efflux here below by means of linguistic techniques. 80 Immediately after this pas-
sage Alemanno asserts that Moses even "prepared the Golden Calf. The intention
was only to cause the spiritual forces to descend by means of a form of a body." 81
There can be little doubt that here there is a deliberate juxtaposition of the Golem,
an anthropoid created by combinations of letters, and the astromagical passage
by Pseudo-Ptolemaeus quoted immediately afterward, dealing with the use of
combinations of letters as a means of capturing the higher emanation. If we are
correct about the significance of the juxtaposition of the two discussions of the
anthropoid — the first created as a regular linguistic Golem, but implicitly under-
stood according to the astral magic of Pseudo-Ptolemaeus's Centiloquium, and the
explicit creation of the statue and the calf for similar reasons — then we may under-
stand Alemanno as implicitly proposing a combination of the classical Ashkenazi
technique with the Hermetic type of magic using astral concepts. We should also
note that the anthropoid and the calf, created in the same manner, though dis-
cussed in different places in Alemanno's Collectanea, are reminiscent of the creation
of the man and the calf in the famous passage from the talmudic tract Sanhedrin.
However, the situation is much more complicated. On the same page of the
Collectanea, Alemanno also quotes the passage from Abraham Abulafia's Hayyei ha-
'01am ha-Ba', discussed above, where he dealt with the good deeds as creating new
souls. Thus, the Ashkenazi corporeal Golem and its astromagical interpretation
are found on the very same page with a long quotation from a book presenting an
ecstatic interpretation of the technique of creating a Golem. This collocation is a
clear sign of a special interest in the topic relatively early in Alemanno's career.
That this interest persisted seems clear from the presence of another, more natu-
ralistic interpretation in his late untitled treatise, a passage dealt with in the next
chapter.
Let me now address another interesting discussion found in Alemanno's
commentary on the Song of Songs, Hesheq Shlomo:
"Wisdom, understanding and knowledge, and every operation [melakh'afi] " S2
[were required] to combine the letters by means of which the world was
created, as the dictum of our sages, blessed be their memory, says: "Bezalel
was acquainted with the letters by the means of whom the world was
created." 83 This is a secret belonging to the secrets of prophecy 84 that has
no equal, because by its means it is possible for the wise investigator to
comprehend the quality of the material combination and the measures of the
elements that enter this mixture and are blended in such a manner that it is
possible to take from the four elements parts that are measured in the same
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proportion as in the human semen. And he will provide to it a measured
heat, similar to the heat provided by the womb of a woman, so that it is pos-
sible to give birth to a man without [the need of] the male semen and the
blood of the female, and without the [intervention of] masculinity and
femininity. If this were [achieved] it would be considered by the investiga-
tors a wondrous wisdom, just as it would be considered wondrous by physi-
cians, who are experts in the combination of opposite medicines. ... So is
the thing according to the prophet who knows the plain meaning of the spir-
itual forces [peshutei ha-kohot ha-ruhaniyyot], 85 which correspond to the level
of the elements in relationship to the forms that dwell upon matters; [the
prophet] called them letters, 86 as it is explained in SeferYetzirah, and he knew
afterward how to permute them and combine them with each other, in such
a manner that an animal form or a human one would emerge in actu. This
is a wondrous wisdom, unsurpassed, from which all the mighty wonders
come. And in this [context] they said that Rava created a three-year-old calf,
and he created a man when he studied SeferYetzirah, 87 and this is [the meaning
of] the account of creation, 88 of which our sages said 89 that it is forbidden to
discuss the account of creation with [fewer] than two [persons] . 9 °
The combinations of the letters as discussed in SeferYetzirah are presented here
as the key to understanding three apparently diverse issues: the creation of the
world by means of letters, the attainment of prophecy, and the creation of the form
of an artificial calf or a man. In presenting the three issues alongside one another,
Alemanno integrates Abulafia's ecstatic-prophetic Kabbalah into a more natural-
istic scheme. All three issues share a common requirement for success: the precise
knowledge of the science of combination, be it of letters or of elements.
Even more sublime than the quasi-alchemical process that uses material ele-
ments 91 is the prophetic creation of the form of man through knowledge of the
combination of the spiritual, namely astral, forces. When properly combined, the
astral powers that have been caused to descend serve as the material substratum
for the emergence of the form of a calf or of a man. Here the creation of the anthro-
poid rests on the view that Hebrew letters function as talismanic signs that can be
combined in such a way as to collect the supernal influx in a specific order that
generates the emergence of a desired form. This account of the creation of the
Golem does not mention dust; it seems that the substratum of the form is
provided by the crystallization of the specific combination of the astral forces,
upon which a form, apparently originating from the superastral world, descends,
an approach that I propose to call magia supranaturalis. Thus the influx coming
from both the supernal letters, astral forces and superastral ones — sefirotic, for
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example — constitutes the anthropoid. Other passages in Alemanno make it clear
that the superastral plane is the realm of the sefirot, which are conceived of as the
forms of the letters, which function as their matter, exactly as in the passage
above. 92 Alemanno's sequence, starting with mental operations and ending
with mel'akhah, "operation," makes clear that mental engagement precedes the
concrete result.
Thus, interest in the Golem, visible in recipes and discussions in the first
manuscripts in Rome, remained stable and alive until late-fifteenth-century
Florence in Alemanno and other figures.
8. Ludovico Lazzarelli's Crater Hermetis
One of Alemanno's contemporaries, Ludovico Lazzarelli, a minor figure active in
northern Italy who was interested in Judaism and Kabbalah, 93 discusses one of the
recipes concerning the Golem in a passage that has attracted the attention of many
scholars. The passage appears in his epistle Crater Hermetis, written in the early
1490s and recently translated by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Ruud M. Bouthoorn.
The bracketed letters denote paragraphs in the Latin original.
[a] Likewise the wise men of the Hebrews say that Enoch in a book he wrote
makes mention of the higher and the lower king. And the one who unites
them both will daily harvest the gladness from above, [b] And in my opinion
that is exactly the heart of this mystery. Abraham too in his book entitled
Sepher Izira — that is to say, the Book of Formation — teaches that this is how
new men are formed: one must go to a desolate mountain, where no beasts
of burden graze, and from its midst one must dig up Adama, that is to say
red and virginal earth; then a man must be formed from it, and letters must
be ritually inscribed on his limbs, [c] In my interpretation this must be
understood as follows: the desolate mountains are the godly sages who are
desolate because they are despised by the multitude, according to the words
of wisdom: "We fools have esteemed their lives insanity." 94
As Gershom Scholem noticed, this passage reflects the influence on Lazzarelli
of R Eleazar of Worms's recipe in his Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah. 95 Indeed, some
of the details mentioned in paragraph [b] above are closer to the recipe of
R Eleazar than to any other recipes I know of: "Abraham, too, in his book titled
Sepher Izira — that is to say, the Book of Formation — teaches that this is how new
men are formed: one must go to a desolate mountain, where no beasts of burden
graze, and from its midst one must dig up Adama, that is to say red 96 and virginal
earth, then a man must be formed from it, and letters must be ritually inscribed on
his limbs." 97 Mountains, white clothes, and virgin earth are found together only in
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the two versions of R. Eleazar's recipe. However, there is also a possibility that
another, yet unknown, probably Ashkenazi, version of this recipe generated
Lazzarelli's text. Lazzarelli mistook a certain commentary on Sefer Yetzirah for Sefer
Yetzirah itself. This mistaking of the commentary for the original book has con-
fused scholars who have attempted to locate the passage in the known versions of
Sefer Yetzirah, naturally to no avail.
More interesting, however, are not the details of the recipe, but the allegorical
interpretations offered by the Christian author in paragraph [c] . Lazzarelli inter-
prets the cattle as the corporeal senses, and the red earth, identical with Adam, as
the intellect of the sage, whom the vulgus avoids and despises. From the mind
of the sages a new man is formed by recitations of words in a certain fashion.
R Eleazar's two versions have nothing to do with a mental creation as part of the
process mentioned in his recipe. Even more interesting is the fact that this cre-
ation is compared to the divine creation, which generates by the mystic utterance
of words, which are made up of letters understood as elements, again a view rem-
iniscent of Sefer Yetzirah, where the phrase 'otiyyot yesod occurs. 98 Thus, the combi-
nations of letters are conceived as the material substratum of the divine creation,
whereas the material creation is vivified by the recitation of the sage. Amazingly,
Lazzarelli presents the whole process as the new, spiritual birth of Ferdinand, the
king of Aragon. This spiritualization of the understanding of the Golem creation
seems to be influenced by Yohanan Alemanno's implicit interpretation of the
recipe of R. Eleazar of Worms, using the magical astral magic on one hand, and
of the spiritual understanding of the significance of the creation of the Golem as
it appears in ecstatic Kabbalah. As mentioned above, on the folio preceding
Alemanno's quotation of the Ashkenazi recipe, he copied another long passage
from Abulafia's Hayyei ha-'OIam ha-Ba'. 99 As seen above, in this book of Abulafia's
the Kabbalist understood the real creation as the generation of the intellect, just as
Lazzarelli understood the regeneration of the king in spiritual rather than material
terms. Moreover, it seems that the inducing of the spiritual elements into the king
has some affinity to the attraction of the spiritual elements by astral magic in
Alemanno's understanding of the Golem as presented above.
Last but not least: in paragraph [a], as an introduction to the creation rite,
Lazzarelli mentions Enoch as dealing with the union between the supernal and the
inferior worlds. Thus he attributes the process explicitly to Jewish masters. Such a
view is found in several medieval sources connected to astromagic, some of them
known by Alemanno. 100 Especially important is a quotation from the Book of the
Religions of the Prophets, a work already lost by Alemanno's time but with passages
preserved in R. Samuel ibn Zarza's book Meqor Hayyim, which was certainly known
by Alemanno. 101 Let me present one of them, which is related to ecstatic Kabbalah.
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In a small Collectanea of kabbalistic traditions gathered together by R. Yitzhaq of
Acre from material belonging to his teacher R Nathan, quite plausibly R. Nathan
ben Sa'adyah Harar, we find the following statement: "Out of his great love for
Enoch the son of Jared, He [God] disclosed to him secrets of the supernal and the
inferior [realms] , and taught him the secret of the connection between them,
which is the secret of sacrifices in all its details." 102
The affinity between sacrifices and Enoch is shared also by the astromagical
traditions mentioned above, and it may indicate that the Enoch/sacrifice connec-
tion was known in Sicily at the end of the thirteenth century before it became
widespread and more explicit in texts written in Spain in the fourteenth century.
The connection between the worlds, at least in the Spanish texts, is clearly astro-
magical. However, to my best knowledge, only in R. Nathan's passage do we have
the motif of connecting supernal and inferior worlds, as in Lazzarelli's epistle.
However, although the source of these traditions is Arabic, the idea of linking by
means of the sacrifice may also have something to do with a kabbalistic etymology
of qorban, "sacrifice," as stemming from QRB, "to bring close." There is an affinity
between the ideal of bringing close the higher and the lower, and the Hermetic
view according to which the temple gods are close to humans because the latter
built the temples. 103
This astromagical text reflects some themes related to Enoch as they appear
later in Lazzarelli's text. However, what is even more interesting is that in his unti-
tled treatise Alemanno refers to Enoch in the context of creating an artificial man,
in a passage that contains astromagical elements, as we shall see in more detail in
the next chapter. Therefore, the existence of an association in Alemanno's text
between Enoch on the one hand and the creation of an artificial man on the other
hand, which is extraordinarily rare, may point to a significant nexus between
Lazzarelli and Alemanno.
This proposal, which emphasizes the Hermetic or astromagical dimension of
Lazzarelli's passage against the background of some medieval Jewish-Arabic
sources, may promote a better understanding of Lazzarelli's text. There can be no
doubt that he was acquainted with R Eleazar's recipe. Nor can there be a reason-
able doubt that the ecstatic kabbalistic understanding of the Golem in the context
of making souls refers to creating an intellect. Recently Hanegraaff accepted the
plausibility of these two affinities, in line with my own suggestion some years
ago. 104 However, he does not see an astromagical aspect in the discussion in Crater
Hermetis. His analysis, which is predicated on the importance of Abulafia's passage
from Hayyei ha-'OIam ha-Ba', does not engage the content of paragraph [a] or
explain the role played by Enoch in the context in which he is mentioned. However,
if we accept an astromagical aspect in Lazzarelli, we may understand the meaning
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of the connection between the higher and lower worlds in Lazzarelli's passage: the
creation of souls, which in fact is an intellectual matter, is part of bringing down
the divine powers by means of reciting letters. In fact, Abulafia had already writ-
ten — both in the quotation above from Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba' and in his later book
'Or ha-Sekhel — that recitation might be related to bringing down supernal influx
upon the reciter. 105 This view was also shared by other Kabbalists, 100 and there is no
reason to assume that Alemanno did not understand Abulafia's more intellectual-
ist vision of the "creation" and "good deed" in such a way. Last but not least:
Abulafia's Kabbalah sometimes assumes that the supernal intellectual influx that
descends upon or is attracted by the Kabbalist may possess him. 107 Although I
cannot pass a final judgment about Lazzarelli's adoption of a view that was so
widespread in Alemanno, an astromagical understanding of the recitations of
letters in the Italian occultist seems to me plausible.
9. A Golem Legend, Its Sources, and Some of Its
Renaissance Repercussions
Another important discussion of the creation of the Golem, perhaps the most
influential one, is a late midrash copied in several early kabbalistic manuscripts.™ 8
It appears that Italian codexes preserve the earliest extant manuscripts. 109 The text
had a wide influence on several discussions of the Golem. One of them is an anon-
ymous kabbalistic Commentary on the Secret o/theTetragrammaton, written sometime
in the mid-thirteenth-century in Spain. 110 This is the longest discussion of the
Golem in kabbalistic literature, and it attracted the attention of both Jewish
Kabbalists and some early Christian ones. As we saw above, this book also influ-
enced R. Yitzhaq of Acre.
This [divine] name is unknown and incomprehensible except by thought, and
it is not comprehended except by five things, which are Tiqqun and Tzeruf and
Ma'amar and Mikhlol and Heshbon. Tiqqun [namely proper order] is to know the
name from its beginning to its end, as it is written. Tzeruf is when you combine
it with the twenty-two alphabets of Sefer Yetzirah; and you shall know how
to make from each and every combination [Tzeruf] a Ma'amar and afterward to
combine [Lilchlol] all of them together, which is the meaning of Mikhlol.
Afterward [you] have to know the calculation [Heshbon] so as not to err when
you join the letters and their vowels. All these things are comprised in Sefer
Yetzirah, and this is the reason why the sages opened [Sefer Yetzirah] with LB, 111
and it is the essence of the written Torah, as we said B of Bereshit, L of Israel. 112
And on this issue the Torah said: "Man cannot know its order, 113 nor is it found
in the earth of living" [Job 28:13] • O n rn i s me sages, blessed be their memory,
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said: "Would man know its order, he could create worlds like the Holy,
blessed be He."" 4 We found in Sejer ha-Bittahon, written by R. Yehudah [ben
Bateirah] ," 5 that Jeremiah, blessed be his memory, was studying Sefer Yetzirah
alone. A voice came out and said to him: "Take a companion. " He went to Sira
his son," 6 and they studied [together] for three years in order to accomplish
what was written: "Then they that feared the Lord spoke one with the other"
[Malachi 3:16]. At the end of the three years, when they wanted to combine
the alphabets, according to the combination [Tzeruf], the Mikhlol, and the
Ma'amar, a man was created, and on his forehead was written YHVH 'Elohim
'Emmet [Jeremiah 10:10: YHVH is the true God]. In the hand of that man there
was a knife, and he erased the 'e of the word 'Emmet and left MeT. Jeremiah rent
his garment and said to him: "Why did you erase the 'e of 'Emmet?" He answered
him: "I will tell you a parable: An architect built many houses, cities, and
squares, but no one was allowed to copy his art and compete with him in
knowledge and skill until two men persuaded him. Then he taught them the
secret of his art, and they knew how to do everything in the right way. When
they learned his secret and his abilities, they began to anger him with words.
Finally they broke with him and became architects like him, except that what
he charged a thaler for, they did for six groats. When people noticed this, they
ceased to honor the architect and came to them and honored them and gave
them commissions when they needed something built. So God has made you
in his image, likeness, and form. Now, when you have created a man like Him,
the people will say that there is no God in the world but you." Jeremiah told
him: "If [this is] so, how can we make it right?" He answered them: "Write the
letters backward on the dust that was thrown, by the intention of your heart,
and do not think about the way of [its] honor or of its order [Tiqquno] , but do
all this backward." And they also did so, and that man came into being before
their eyes, dust and ashes. Then Jeremiah said: "Indeed it is worthwhile to
study these matters for the sake of knowing the power and the dynamis of the
creator of the world, but not in order to [actually] do [them], but you shall
study them in order to comprehend and teach."" 7
There is a clear discrepancy between Abulafia's approach as described above
and the one described in this kabbalistic treatise written in Spain. Following other
rabbinic trends, including the late midrashic source, this passage emphasizes the
importance of joint study and practice, whereas Abulafia emphasized the impor-
tance of solitude. Many of the few manuscripts that contain this passage are of
Italian origin; one of them belonged to a certain Nissim al-Faraj, presumably a
mid-Quattrocento figure active in Sicily, who was the father ofFlavius Mithridates." 8
Anthropoids
This is one of the Hebrew texts identified recently by Franco Bacchelli as having
been translated into Italian in the circle of Pico della Mirandola; Bacchelli has also
printed specimens from the translation." 9 Scholem pointed out that Johann
Reuchlin transmitted part of it in his De Arte Cabalistica, 110 most probably from a
manuscript whose content is very similar to that of the New York codex that serves
as our source. 121 Therefore, though presumably written in Spain, the Commentary
on the Secret of the Tetragrammaton was preserved, translated, and quoted in Italy.
Where R. Yitzhaq of Acre studied this text it is impossible to decide.
This tradition as transmitted in the Commentary on the Secret of the Tetragrammaton
not only differs from the Ashkenazi techniques described elsewhere in its account,
which use ancient figures; it also does not address either the topic of creating a
figure out of dust or the need for purity. There are two major sources for these dif-
ferences. One is a Jewish tradition that encouraged the study of Sefer Yetzirah; the
second is probably a tradition found in one of the most famous and voluminous
Arabic treatises on magic, Abu Bakhr ibn 'Ali al-Wahshiyya's Nabbatean Agriculture,
in the form in which it was preserved in a thirteenth-century Hebrew translation of
a ninth- or tenth-century source:
Shem Tov ibn Falaquera wrote that he found, written in the Book ojAgricuIture,
that [a] in very ancient times one of the sorcerers made a man; he mentioned
in his book how he made it and what he did so that his generation was com-
plete. However, he acknowledged that the man he had made was not of the
human species and could not talk 122 or think. 123 However, his limbs did come
out perfect in their form. [The sorcerer] was astonished that [the man he
had made] could not talk or think and that he took no nutrition, and [yet]
survived for a year. They said that the king prevented [the sorcerer] from
engaging in making [another] man or animal, in order not to corrupt the
faith of the masses; rather, he should strive to perform some actions that
would benefit the masses. He also mentioned that the man he had made
would open and close his eyes; according to them it is possible to do this. . . .
[b] They said that we see that a rat was born from the mud, which decayed
until it became black from the sun's shining on it; [the rat] became an
animal capable of motion. They said that just as it was possible with
animals, so is it possible with humans. It is also written there that there is a
mountain in China 124 on which is generated the form of a man with all of his
limbs, and that people from those countries take the dust of that mountain
and soak it in a hidden place until it becomes moist, [so that] the form of a
living man, capable of motion, is generated from it. However, thereafter he
survives for only a day or even less. 125
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This passage was preserved in a Hebrew translation by the mid-fourteenth-
century Castilian thinker R. Shmuel ibn Zarza, who quoted a now lost Commentary
on the Bible by a mid-thirteenth-century Jewish philosopher active in Castile,
R Shem Tov ben Joseph ibn Falaquera. The latter, an expert in Arabic philosophy,
both Neo-Aristotelian and Neoplatonic, preserved much material that was written
originally in Arabic, and because of his translations into Hebrew some of them
survived. 126 More notable is his translation of lengthy excerpts from the Arabic
original of R. Solomon ibn Gabirol's important Neoplatonic book The Fountain of
Life, and some excerpts from the Theology of Aristotle, a compendium of Plotinian
passages extant in Arabic. The fact that this philosopher preserved the passage
above is in itself interesting, since this topic did not draw the attention of Spanish
Kabbalists and even less of Jewish philosophers. In any case, Falaquera's broad
range of intellectual interests is reminiscent of Alemanno's, one of his great
admirers in the late fifteenth century. His writing one of the first commentaries on
Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed did not preclude his quotation of this magical
passage.
Ibn Zarza, as we shall see in the next chapter, was acquainted also with another
text stemming from an Arabic source, as preserved by the Portuguese Jewish writer
R. David Yom Tov ibn Billya, dealing with a metallic anthropoid. However, Ibn
Wahshiyya's Nabbatean Agriculture, from which Falaquera, as cited by Ibn Zarza,
quoted, is extant and available in print and demonstrates that Falaquera's sum-
mary is reliable. 127 In the tenth century Ibn Wahshiyyah made an Arabic translation
of presumably a much earlier book on magic, perhaps written originally in Greek.
The Arabic work was available to at least two medieval writers: Maimonides in
Egypt 128 and Pseudo-Ibn Ezra in Spain, about whose astromagical Sefer ha-'Atzamim
little is yet known. 129 Thus, the story above reflects traditions that cannot be dated
later than the ninth century. For the purpose of our discussion, a comparison
between some of the details reflected in the passage above and some Golem
traditions may be illuminating. Their similarities demonstrate that there is good
reason to assume that at least some of the characteristics of the various Golem
recipes antedate their formulations as found in European Jewish writers in the
Middle Ages, and allow a much more complex description of the history of the
Golem ideas.
Let me start with the fact that according to Nabbatean Agriculture the story about
the creation of the artificial man is an ancient one. Although the precise identity
and the location of the story are not given in the Arabic version, I see no reason to
deny the notion that the story may indeed be related to an ancient tradition. Such
traditions are attested by the story about the notorious late-antique Simon Magus 120
and the talmudic story about the creation of the anthropoid attributed to the
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'Amora Rava. When we compare these two stories with Ibn Wahshiyya's passage,
it is conspicuous that the Arabic book preserves a version closer to the talmudic
than to the Gnostic type of anthropoid attributed to Simon Magus. One notable
similarity is the mention of the creation of both an anthropoid and an animal.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, there are also affinities between some Golem
traditions and a story preserved in one of the ancient Roman fables of Phaedrus,
especially in the occurrence of the term 'Emmet, namely Truth. 131
The correspondence between the story of the builders in the late midrash
and the Commentary on the Secret of the Tetragrammaton on the one hand, and Ibn
Wahshiyyah's passage on the other hand may be explained in two ways: either the
Arabic text influenced the late midrash, in which case the event took place in the
East, or both the late midrash and Ibn Wahshiyyah drew upon a common earlier
source that must be dated not later than the ninth century in the East. It is difficult
to decide which of the two explanations is more plausible, but if we accept the first
one, it seems that R. Yehudah Barceloni and thus his town, Barcelona, may consti-
tute the starting point, or at least a site that mediated material for all the versions
that include the story about the architect and the builders. 132 Indeed, Barceloni's
views were known in the Ashkenazi regions, and it may be that the late midrash in
its fuller version reached Ashkenazi masters via him. Indeed, the thirteenth-
century Commentary on Sejer Yetzirah attributed to R. Sa'adyah Gaon explicitly quotes
part of the passage above as a "midrash." 133 Moreover, it is reasonable to assume
that R. Abraham Abulafia brought the oldest dated manuscript that includes this
treatise from Barcelona to Rome. 134
In any case, any serious attempt to attribute to early-thirteenth-century
Ashkenazi figures the invention of the techniques related to the Golem should
take into consideration the traditions found in the late midrash. 135 Assuming as I
do that the speech of the Golem is an addition in the late midrash and in the
Commentary on the Secret of the Tetragrammaton, since it is different from, indeed even
contradicted by, the earlier part of these texts, we shall be more acutely aware that
the voice of the Golem sharply differs in its content from that of God, as the latter
explicitly permits the study of the book if it is done in a correct manner. Moreover,
God's statement in the Commentary on the Secret of the Tetragrammaton not only allows
for study but also does not criticize magical attainments except with regard to the
creation of the artificial man. God is not afraid of the creation of a Golem and its
implications for the status of religion; the Golem, however, fears those negative
implications. We may assume that these implications stem not from the talmudic
sources or from an interpretation of Sejer Yetzirah, but from the Arabic discussion
or its source, and were subsequently grafted onto the Jewish discussions, where
there was much less resistance to this practice. R. Yitzhaq of Acre, in the long
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passage analyzed above, circumvented the negative implications found in the
Commentary on the Secret ojthe Tetracjrammaton, although he was obviously aware of
the existence of the text, and returned to a more positive approach, and even
amplified it beyond any of the earlier sources.
The most controversial part of the late midrashic text and of the Commentary on
the Secret of the Tetragrammaton is the quotation from Jeremiah 10:10: YHWH 'Elohim
'Emmet. What do those words mean in the Bible and in the medieval passage? In the
biblical context all three words are to be read as divine names, which means that
'Emmet, namely Truth, is a third divine name. 136 Scholem interpreted the late
midrashic and the kabbalistic play on 'Emmet/Met in a dramatic way, by translating
the former as "God is truth" and the latter as "God is dead," thus transforming the
kabbalistic and late midrashic sources into precursors of Nietzsche's famous
formula. He assumed that on the forehead of the Golem a sentence was found with
God as the subject and Met as a verbal form. 137 However, what is evident is that the
Golem is dying, in some form of suicide, and thus the message has to do with the
creature and not with its Creator. From the way in which the reaction of the two
human operators is formulated, it is not the death of God that is transpiring; in my
opinion, based upon the content of the parable, the first operator, which is a met-
onym for God, does not die when the artisans are substituting him or are imagined
to substitute him; he is just neglected. The death is, quite explicitly, relevant just for
the creature. In favor of the nominal reading of the two formulas let me adduce
the insight of my friend Mr. Maurice Finkelson from Paris, who remarked in a con-
versation that the erasure of 'aleph from 'Emmet generates another word, namely
"dead," in a manner reminiscent of the Greek word aletheia, which also means
"truth," and which is constructed from two components: letheia, meaning "obliv-
ion," and an alpha privative, which functions as a negation of the word to which it
is attached. I wonder whether this affinity may point to a Greek background, in
which case we may add a Greek or Hellenistic background to a topic that had an
important place in Arabic magical literature, was adopted in the late midrash, inte-
grated by Kabbalists, and then translated into Italian in the late-fifteenth-century
Florentine milieu. 138 In any case it is quite plausible that some of the sources of the
Nabbatean Agriculture are Hellenistic and close to Hermetic literature.
To return for a moment to a point we have already made above: we see in the
late midrash and in the Commentary on the Secret of the Tetragrammaton a conflation of
two different approaches toward the permission to create an artificial anthropoid.
One probably stems from early Jewish sources and deals with the combinations of
letters over the form created out of dust and water, which is a ceremony to be
performed by two or three persons and is recommendable in principle. The other
expresses a negative attitude toward the artificial creation and is inspired by the
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Arabic story or its sources: God favors the creation of the anthropoid; it is the
Golem that is, paradoxically, against it. The early Ashkenazi sources do not reflect
the Golem's fears, although these fears entered some later Ashkenazi or French
Jewish sources and then Kabbalah. Lazzarelli's discussion is therefore indebted to
a version that does not include reluctance toward creation of the artificial man,
although the Italian translation by Pier Leone da Spoleto of the Commentary on
the Secret of the Tetragrammaton reflects a more complex synthesis between two
diverging trends.
Let me comment briefly on when the complex of issues related to the story in
the Commentary on the Secret of the Tetragrammaton might have appeared. Although
this work was written in the Middle Ages, the passage quoted from it has many
early parallels, including the cult of the royal images in ancient Mesopotamia. 139
Those statues were conceived of as a living manifestation of the divinity, "empow-
ered to act and speak on a ruler's behalf."' 40 This context enables us to make better
sense of the occurrence of the divine names on the Golem's forehead. 141 The
Golem, like Adam, is in a certain way a representative of God, since both are
created in His image.' 42
What is the main change that took place in the long journey that the Golem
passages underwent from their inception until their arrival in Florence? In my
opinion, it is the strong synthesis achieved between the linguistic magic based on
Hebrew letters and divine names on the one hand, and natural magic on the other
hand, sometimes coupled with astromagic, in which the linguistic elements are
secondary to or absent from the process of fabrication. Such a development could
hardly have taken place in Spain, where the ecstatic Kabbalah of Abulafia had been
rejected. It is only in Italy, after the arrival of the Spanish discussions written in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries on generatio equiuoca, and of metallic astromagic,
that the different traditions concerning the anthropoid could be grafted upon the
Ashkenazi esoterica and upon discussions in ecstatic Kabbalah, resulting in rein-
terpretation as recitations of formulas that acted as talismanic entities. However,
these syntheses are far from exhausting the complexity of the process of cultural
transmission, since only in fifteenth-century Italy did the views arriving from
abroad and integrated into broader schemes by a Jewish author meet also the
Hermetic and Neoplatonic material translated by Ficino, thus producing a much
greater synthesis, as in the case of the writings of Lazzarelli and others. The arche-
ology of knowledge, as illustrated in the foregoing analysis of the Golem recipes,
demonstrates that the cultural developments that arrived in Florence in the late
fifteenth century represent much older layers of human thought that diversified
themselves in different cultures and were reintegrated in more comprehensive
syntheses generated by the concept of the prisca theologia. As we have seen in this
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chapter, and shall see as well in the following discussions, the presence of a variety
of cultures in the Florentine speculative Renaissance counteracts a unilateral,
monolithic account of this phenomenon as a simple revival of ancient Greek,
Hellenistic, and Roman cultures. The concerns ofjewish figures such as Alemanno,
and of Christians such as Ficino, Giovanni Pico, Lazzarelli, and Reuchlin, with the
concepts of creating an artificial man reflect the emphasis on the creative powers
attributed to humans in this period. The real homo faber became the person who
was capable of creating an anthropoid.
It should, however, be remembered that not only Jewish culture, transmitted in
a specific non-European language, but also some aspects of Arabic culture con-
tributed substantially to some aspects of the Florentine Renaissance, either
through translations into Hebrew, Latin, and Italian, or indirectly, as in the case of
the Commentary on the Secret of the Terragrammaton, which mediated the view of the
Nabbatean Agriculture, or through oral communications ofjewish masters active in
Florence. 143 All these forms of transmission are evident in the cases of authors
mentioned above, although they have little to do with the "rise of humanism" in
the earlier decades of the fifteenth century in Florence.
Let us turn now to another example of a magical theme, namely the creation
of an astromagical anthropoid, as described in passages written in fourteenth-
century Portugal and in Castile, which made their way to Florence and eventually
into one of Ficino's books.
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21
ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC
ANTHROPOIDS FROM MEDIEVAL
SPAIN TO RENAISSANCE ITALY
i. Introduction
As we have seen, magic was part of many forms of Judaism for centuries despite
attempts to attenuate it, especially in the philosophically oriented circle leaning to
Maimonides' thought. Jewish magic in the first stages of Jewish mysticism, the
Heikhalot literature and its reverberations, including its repercussions in south-
ern Italy from the tenth to twelfth centuries, and in Ashkenazi esoteric literatures
emphasized mainly the linguistic aspects of magic, namely letters, names, seals,
prayers, and incantations. These strategies were conceived of as extensions of the
divine creative speech and of the divine names. Other forms of magic, which were
based upon a certain type of order in reality and which used nonlinguistic aspects
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
of reality to operate, were less widely accepted in Judaism, although they, too,
found a place in some medieval schools of Jewish thought. They were conceived of
as being much more in conflict than in concert with what many Jewish thinkers
regarded as "authentic" Judaism, which was much less concerned with nature and
natural process and much more with Hebrew language and authoritative texts. As
is well known since Yehezkel Kaufmann's fascinating phenomenology of biblical
thought, biblical Judaism introduced a concept of divinity that was radically
divorced from any dependence upon nature and fate. 1 The divine will was con-
ceived of as the dominant source of events in nature and history, and this will was
expressed in the biblical account that combined divine history with an elaborate
system of rites. Thus any recourse to the science of nature, in the form of astron-
omy, physics, or medicine, especially as they appeared in medieval Jewish texts,
implied the existence of an independent kind of causality not explicated in the
religious canon.
Although some elements of these sciences came ultimately from Babylonia,
most of them stemmed from Greece. The latter, especially the philosophers, were
fascinated by the sense of cosmos, or the ordered universe. Such a trend con-
flicted, at least implicitly, with the voluntarist image of God as the ruler of the
universe. After the destruction of the second Temple, the mixture of Jewish and
Greek elements became formative in the spiritual development of both Judaism
and Europe. The biblical mind and the Greek one, in their different metamorpho-
ses in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, encountered, confronted, but mostly
fertilized each other in numerous ways over centuries. One of the less known of
these encounters and syntheses is the vast domain of magic. In ancient Judaism,
the status of magic was even more precarious than the status of the sciences; in the
biblical form of Judaism, though less so in the postbiblical ones, magic was not
only forbidden but also regarded as a potential danger to monotheism. The ambiv-
alence to any kind of intermediaries, manifest in earliest Jewish writings, espe-
cially the canonical ones, was especially strong when it came to attributing an
important role to demonic powers. However, even the use of nondemonic powers
was regarded with suspicion: attempts to learn about the future, for example,
assumed the existence of preordered processes, which would impinge upon the
unrestrained sovereignty of the divine will. Magic, especially the astral form,
might be instrumental in introducing the idea of fixed order or nature, which
allowed for the existence of an order that had no explicit religious significance.
The secrets of nature were first mentioned in nonrabbinic Jewish sources,
which also contained apocalyptic and mystical theologoumena. 2 The biblical form
of religiosity centered on the divine will remained dominant in the two main
bodies of early medieval Jewish literature, the Talmud and the midrash, and in
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some versions of medieval Jewish mysticism. 3 Though acknowledging the efficacy
of magic de facto, Jews, especially the elite, condemned it de jure. As a result,
although there can be no doubt about the important role this lore and its practices
played in popular circles, its function in most of the religious literatures produced
before the twelfth century was relatively small. 4 Rarely do surviving Jewish magical
treatises composed long before the twelfth century contain references to more-
comprehensive schemes, theological or cosmological. However, we begin to
discern the influence of Hermetic texts in the writings of two important Jewish
thinkers of the twelfth century, R. Abraham ibn Ezra and R. Yehudah ha-Levi; both
most likely drew upon Arabic sources. Ibn Ezra's introduction of astrology is vital
for the understanding of the role of some components of Jewish ritual. For exam-
ple, he interpreted the tabernacle as if it were a huge talisman 5 that served to attract
the astral influx. 6 The theory of the descent of the pneumata of the astral bodies
began to appear in the thirteenth century and even more in the fourteenth century
in some Spanish writings, a fact that was fateful for the understanding of central
issues in subsequent Jewish kinds of mysticism. However, the writings of Abraham
ibn Ezra, and later those of the numerous commentators on his Commentary on the
Pentateuch, 7 important as they were, were only one avenue of the penetration of
Arabic-Hermetic magic into medieval Judaism. Beyond their interest in reinter-
preting Judaism in a more comprehensive way, some Jewish thinkers also adopted
views that were not strictly concerned with interpretation. Different from the com-
mon, popular magic, the Hermetic amalgam of astrology and magic functioned
also as a systematic worldview for the elite. More than a century before Marsilio
Ficino's adoption of Neoplatonic and Hermetic magic as an ideal, 8 some Spanish
Jewish authors, especially those following Ibn Ezra's thought and, under their
influence, also some Jewish figures in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy,
offered interesting syntheses between Jewish forms of monotheism and astral
magic. 9
This increasingly mechanized conception of the universe contributed to a novel
understanding of Judaism, which became much more explicit and comprehensive
with and after the resurgence of interest in magic among some members of the
Spanish Jewish elite in the fourteenth century. This phenomenon has received lit-
tle attention from modern scholars, with the exception of Dov Schwartz. Although
some magical views absorbed in this period changed the course of Jewish mysti-
cism 10 and also influenced Christian Renaissance magic," we need more studies
on the translations into Hebrew of Arabic magical texts, such as the famous
Picatrix, 12 and on most of the magically oriented writings by Spanish Jews. Some
decades after the renascence of the occult arts in Alfonso Sabio's Toledo, in
which Jewish translators played a significant role, the impact of the Arabic occult
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
sciences became even more visible in Hebrew written literature. 13 Although it
would be very difficult to detect any such influence on Hebrew sources concerned
with "original" Jewish magic during the lifetime of Alfonso, focused as they were
on a linguistic approach — for example, the use of divine names — by the middle of
the fourteenth century the situation had changed substantially. In the various
parts of the Zoharic literature, edited and perhaps even composed in its entirety in
Castile in the last decades of the thirteenth century, Hermetic astromagic was not
viewed in a positive light. Although some traces of astral magic can be detected
in the Zohar, by and large the theosophical-theurgical scheme of this classic of
Jewish mysticism was alien to Hermetic astral magic. Only after the temporary
waning of the influence of this corpus of mystical writings, at the beginning of the
second third of the fourteenth century, was the way opened to the penetration of
different kinds of magic. This somewhatlate reaction to, and perhaps even absorp-
tion of, the concern with the occult sciences that had been revived in Toledo in the
thirteenth century is an issue that still requires close scrutiny. Given the prelimi-
nary state of research on medieval Jewish magic, we know only little about the
reasons for the change of attitude in what I assume were only some elite circles. It
seems plausible to assume that these circles in Castile were acquainted with Arabic
literature and inclined, in some instances, to a philosophical interpretation of
Kabbalah. These circles represent a modest, but still recognizable, contribution to
the transmission of the magical lore from North Africa and the Orient to the
Occident. 14 The odd fact is that although the Jews of Castile had been under
Christian rule since the end of the thirteenth century, the reorientation to a
philosophical-magical understanding of magical texts was influenced primarily
by Islamic, and only marginally by Christian, sources. The two stages of develop-
ment of elite magic in Spain, first in the circle of Alfonso, and then in Castile
among Jews, should be seen as adumbrating and even having a certain impact on
the Florentine syncretism during the late fifteenth century.
2. A Pseudepigraphic Epistle
The following translation and analysis of an epistle from an unknown person to
an unknown recipient helps to illuminate the introduction of Arabic magic into
some elite circles of Spanish Jews in the fourteenth century. Although Moritz
Steinschneider, the dean of bibliographical studies, provided a learned descrip-
tion of one of the manuscripts preserving this document more than 150 years ago,
it failed to attract the attention of most later scholars. 15 The epistle is extant in
three Hebrew manuscripts. 16 The longest version, Ms. Budapest, Kaufmann 246,
folios ia-b, has not been previously identified by scholars; Ms. London, Montefiore
431, folios 7b-8a, 17 and Ms. Munich, Hebr. 214, folios 32a-b, lS preserve shorter,
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
almost identical, versions. Because each of the three manuscripts contributes
details that are missing in the other two, I offer a collated version, including
elements from all the manuscripts, in the following translation:
This epistle was sent by the sage ' 9 to an honest disciple of his, and
this is its version. And I, Isaac the translator, have found it in an old book, a
precise one and full of sciences. You, the distinguished disciple, should
know that out of my abiding love [for you] and my will and intention to help
you extensively, I shall let you know a wondrous thing, which I have extracted
from the great book of [Claudius] Ptolemaeus, 20 and I have experimented
with it. Calculate the hour of the conjunction of Saturn with Mercury. 21 The
conjunction shall be in Aquarius, the domicile of Saturn, which is also one
of the [watery] signs. 22 It has the form [tzurah] 23 of a man. 24 Gemini will be
ascendant in the domicile of Mercury, and it is also an auspicious sign. It
will be on a Wednesday, which is the day of Mercury, [in] the third hour,
which is the hour of Saturn. Jupiter will be in aspect to them in trine or in
sextile and so also the Moon, or the sixth aspect. Mars will be in the descen-
dant 25 house, combusted by the Sun. It will be in aspect at the place of the
conjunction, and Venus in one of the cardinal points to the west [of the
Sun] ; and the Sun will be together with them. And the Moon 26 will be in
aspect to them in trine or in sextile. And if you will remember what you have
studied with me concerning the science of astronomy, 27 you will know that
the situation of this configuration [tzurah] will occur again only in ninety
years, seven months, eleven days, five hours, forty-nine minutes, and twenty-
two seconds. And in the hour of the conjunction, when the stars are in this
configuration [tzurah], 28 you shall have ready whatever [kind of] metal you
like, and the metal should be molten. And a mold [defus] 20 of a beautiful'
man should be in front of you. You shall have an astrolabe [keli] 31 in your
hand, or any [other] instrument that is constructed to determine the hour. 32
When you arrive at the part of the hour of the conjunction, you should pour
the metal into the mold. And a form of a man will emerge [therefrom] , full
of a very subtle pneuma [ruhaniuyut], 33 made up of wisdom and prophecy 34
and a favorable zodiacal sign and grace and honor. It [the form] will possess
the faculty of speech, [and] will foretell all the future [things] , when you ask
it about them. And if it stands in front of you in the moment of your concen-
tration [hitbodedkha be-hokhmah] 35 on [a matter of] science [hokhmah] 36 and
on any other issue, nothing will remain doubtful and unknown [to you].
And if you make it small so that you are able to hold it whenever you like, you
will lack no honor, rank, and richness, and people and kings will respect
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
and honor you. And I shall disclose to you the reason of it. Mercury has
power over wisdom, understanding, and prophecy. And Saturn [has] the
power over the knowledge of secrets 37 and how to bear the burden 38 of study,
and it is a powerful star. From their conjunction [of Saturn and Mercury]
swiftness of understanding, great memory, much forbearance, and the
power of prophecy are [all] strengthened in him [the operator] . And because
of the fact that Jupiter is distinguished and noble, it has power over love of
justice, [and] over wealth and property and honor, which should be enumer-
ated with them in the trine [aspect] , which is the aspect of love. So also the
planet of Moon is helpful toward the good, but the sextile aspect will suffice
for you, because its goodness is not like that of Jupiter. And because Mars is
a nefarious planet, [causing] bloodshed, it is irascible; we have put it with
them such that it is combusted so that no power will remain in it. And
because the Sun has also some part in the sciences, and it leads the whole
body, it will be with them [the limbs?] and in the front of them in the third
or sixth aspect, which are favorable aspects. Also the Sun possesses the
power of dominion and honor, rank, and glory. And because Venus is
appointed upon delights, we have placed it in its great power. Also Gemini,
which is in the ascendant, is the zodiacal sign of prophecy and the sages,
and so also Aquarius, which is strong, too. Therefore, if you make the form
when the position [s] of the planets [are] such [namely the configuration
described above] , all the favorable powers I have mentioned will emanate
upon you. And let no one know it besides you, the distinguished disciple,
and may God lead you on the path of good knowledge. And know that I have
made such a one [a form] when I went out of the cave where I had hidden
and concentrated [hitbodadeti] . 39 This was the reason for my grandeur and
my majesty and the greatness of my wisdom and the fear of the people
toward me. I advise you to do it, and you will be successful. And always carry
it, but discreetly. Amen Amen Sellah.
Before undertaking a conceptual analysis of this text, let me dwell upon its
attributions to various persons. The name Isaac at the beginning of the epistle is
hardly identifiable; even the term "translator" is not the single obvious translation
of the Hebrew ma'atiq, which in medieval Hebrew may also stand for "copyist."
Steinschneider and Scholem dealt with the epistle in the context of pseudepi-
graphic texts attributed to Maimonides. However, not only is this explicit attribu-
tion wrong historically — it is clear that the text was not written by the historical
Maimonides — but also there is no substantial reason to assume that the unknown
author of the epistle ever intended to attribute it to the philosopher. In Ms. Munich,
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
the epistle starts with a sentence that indicates that this is an addition to material
that has reached him earlier and that he is quoting it here because it deals with a
wondrous issue. The epistle follows a spurious epistle on alchemy, attributed to
Maimonides. It is plausible that the copyist of the Munich manuscript transcribed
the epistle not because of its attribution to Maimonides, but because of the affinity
of alchemy with the content of our epistle. However, the fact that the epistle was
found as an appendix to an epistle attributed to Maimonides contributed to the
attribution of the epistle to the philosopher in the London Ms. Montefiore, where
the name of the sage mentioned in the opening sentence has been erased and a
modern hand — perhaps Steinschneider's or that of someone influenced by him —
has added the name Maimonides. Influenced partly by Steinschneider's descrip-
tion, partly by Hirschfeld's catalogue, Scholem accepted this attribution. 40
However, it seems that there is no medieval evidence whatever that medieval
authors intended to attribute it to Maimonides.
3. Analysis of the Epistle and Parallels in
Ibn Billya and Ibn Zarza
Although we have no direct information about the identity of the translator of the
epistle into Hebrew or about the circle where this text was influential, we should at
least attempt to locate the circle where views on astromagic are known to have
been discussed. Some Jewish thinkers, such as Abraham ibn Ezra, were already
acquainted with similar views in the twelfth century. However, no precise parallel
to this text is known before the fourteenth century. Only in a quotation found in
R Samuel ibn Zarza's Meqor Hayyim, written in 13 68, 4I from a work by R. David ibn
Billya, an early-fourteenth-century Portuguese intellectual who was interested in
astral magic, in philosophy, and marginally also in Kabbalah, do we find what
seems to me to be an almost identical description of the horoscope concerning the
form. Ibn Billya, probably in his lost Commentary on the Torah, 42 is quoted as follows:
It is written in the Book of Talismans that when Zuhal 43 is conjoint with
'Utarid 44 in the [house of] Aquarius, which has the form of a man, and the
ascendant is Gemini, the domicile of Mercury; and it is a Wednesday, which
is the day of Mercury, in their hour, which is the domicile of Saturn, and it
[Saturn] aspects it in trine, which is the aspect of love, and likewise the
Moon; and Mars is combusted by the Sun, and it aspects the place of
conjunction; and Venus is in one of the cardinal points, to the west and in its
great power; and the Sun is with them, ahead of them [in] sextile or trine
aspect; when, at the time of conjunction, the stars have this configuration,
pour whatever metal you wish into a mold of a handsome man. The form
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
that is composed of them [the stars of this configuration] shall succeed [in
all that concern] rank and honor, and it will foretell the future. 45
From the philological point of view, the similarity between this quotation and
the text translated above is sufficient to conclude that the two texts are closely
related, although it is also obvious that they are not identical. Indeed it would not
be too far-fetched to advance the hypothesis that the Book of Talismans is identical
with the great book by Ptolemaeus mentioned above. In any case there can be no
doubt that the principle guiding the two texts is identical: the divinatory role of the
metallic form, fabricated at a particular astrological moment, related to the special
influences of the various planets.
Let me now attempt to describe the epistle above from a conceptual point of
view. It obviously stems from an Arabic source, and the fact that a translator
named Isaac is mentioned in the introductory remarks may be connected to the
translations from Syriac to Arabic by the famous Isaac ibn Hunain. Although the
ultimate source may indeed be Greek, as the mention of a book by Ptolemaeus
indicates, the Spanish Jews had access to the Arabic forms of higher magic. From
my own inspection of the various divinatory uses of anthropoid forms, it seems
that the text is unique. It shares some elements with the Hermetic tradition on the
creation of gods by attracting them into statues, especially the divinatory role of
the statues and their metallic nature, but in the original Hermetic texts the statues
are fabricated from a variety of materials and not from only one type of metal. 46
Also the astrological nature of the rite of fabrication is not so central in the
Hermetic texts, whereas in our instance it seems to be a crucial issue. This text also
differs from the focus on the revelatory nature of the encounter with the perfect
nature in Picatrix, a work otherwise very similar to some elements in our text. 47
Here it is not his alter ego that someone encounters, but a pneumatic form that
emerges from the metal poured into the mold. Moreover, the pagan incantations
related to this astromagical praxis in Picatrix do not occur in our epistle. The idea
of a pneumatic form standing in front of someone else in order to disclose secrets
to him is found in thirteenth-century kabbalistic texts, but no astrological or
alchemical factor is mentioned in those texts. 48 Though close also to the technique
of creation of an anthropoid that has some prophetic powers in the writings of
Jabir ibn Hayyan, our document does not indicate any acquaintance with the the-
ory of balances, so characteristic of the theory of this famous alchemist. 49 Let me
attempt therefore to focus upon the specific content of this document.
The indifference to the nature of the metal to be used points to a very limited
alchemical concern in the underlying conception of the document; the dominant con-
cern is obviously the astrological one. What is vital for the success of the enterprise is
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
not so much the material involved but its precise timing. The assumption of the text
is that in the given moment the pneumata emanated by the seven planets are of such
a nature that they will ensure the emergence of a perfect pneumatic entity, able to
convey spiritual secrets to the magician. The metal is necessary only in order to serve
as the substratum for the collection of the influxes, whereas the factor that enables the
capture of the supernal forces is the shape, the beautiful form that is visited by the
pneumatic being. In contrast to the Hermetic practice in Asclepius, the introduction
of the pneumatic element does not activate the metallic body in order to vivify it; the
text does not allude to the movement of the metallic body. Rather, the shape attracts
the pneuma but then leaves the metallic construct in order to reveal itself to the
magician. Perhaps the metal served as a kind of mirror, which reflected the pneumata
generated by the planets. We can also ask: What is the reason for using the metal at
all? I assume that it fulfills the function of creating an anthropoid body in a certain
given moment. As we know from other astrological texts, the moment of birth or of
the conception of the infant is closely related to his nature, since this moment is char-
acterized by a specific constellation. Thus, in the moment when the above-mentioned
configuration of planets is achieved, by pouring the metal someone creates the body,
which is spiritually characterized by the relationship between the planets and stars
in that moment. The author seems to distinguish between two forms: a greater one,
concerned with spiritual achievements such as the revelation of sciences, solving
doubtful issues, or revealing others; and a smaller one, which seems to be more
related to external attainments, such as glory and honor. The former is implicitly
conceived as a rare type of experience, apparently occurring only once in more than
ninety years, while the latter is much more available.
From the astrological point of view, the form stands under the aegis of Saturn.
Not only is this planet mentioned at the very beginning of the description of
the horoscope, but also some of its particular proprieties become important as the
description evolves. So, for example, the concepts of disclosing secrets and of
prophecy are obviously central to the function of the form, especially the great form,
and they are qualities related to Saturn, although, in the instance of prophecy, the
form is also related to Mercury. This seems to be the reason for the basic configura-
tion of planets: the conjunction of Mercury and Saturn. It seems plausible also to
relate the saturnine nature of the whole enterprise to the fact that the author
performed this magical ritual after he emerged from his cave: in medieval astrology,
the cave, like prophecy, is considered to be under the aegis of Saturn. 50
4. The Metallic Anthropoid and the Golem
The epistle quoted above might be considered by someone who is superficially
acquainted with medieval Jewish literature to be exceptional; given its strong
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magical and astrological elements, the very fact of its translation and quotation in
a supercommentary on the Bible may seem bizarre. However, we must take a differ-
ent view when we take into account a broader development in the elite literature of
Jews in the Middle Ages. The whole range of this development cannot be surveyed
here, but we must note the presence of some very similar discussions in related
Jewish texts. 51 Let me therefore compare the practice described in the epistle with
what seem to be the closest Jewish phenomena, which constitute the context of the
quotation from Ibn Billya and prompted the quotation of part of our text.
As we have seen, the building of an anthropoid figure, the famous Golem, was
well known in Jewish magic since the early Middle Ages. The activation of one or
more minerals was involved in the creation of an active entity in a human shape.
However, most of the Golem recipes contain no astrological element, with the
notable exception of the anonymous early-thirteenth-century Sefer ha-Hayyim,
where the presence of some astrological terms demonstrates a synthesis of the
earlier, nonastrological version of magic with an astrological one. 52 However, even
in this case the creature is constructed out of dust, as in the classical forms of
Jewish prescription to create a Golem, without any reference to metallurgical
details. Moreover, the issue of foretelling future issues or disclosing secrets does
not occur in Sefer ha-Hayyim, which implies, however, the existence and practice of
some other types of magic. Although this type of anthropoid also seems to be
related to the impact of Hermetic knowledge, at least partially influenced by
Abraham ibn Ezra's thought, we should in no way attempt to explain the occur-
rence of the above practice in Spain as related to the northern French tract. They
represent two independent cases of penetration of alien magical elements into
Jewish European culture. Despite their interest in the magical implications of the
metallic anthropoid, to be described below, the Sephardic authors did not even
invoke the concept of the Golem, which was more consonant with the mystical
theology of the Ashkenazi authors. 5 ' However, another discussion started by
Abraham ibn Ezra warrants closer scrutiny. In his Commentary on the Pentateuch at
Genesis 31:19 the exegete interprets the nature of the devices called teraphim,
stolen by Rachel from Laban, as having human forms; 54 he does this in the context
of his assumption, mentioned as the view of "others," that there is in "the power of
the sages of the zodiacal signs [hakhmei ha-mazalot] to make a form [tzurah] in
certain hours, [and] that form will speak." 55 Immediately following this statement
is the proposal, which to Ibn Ezra seems a plausible one, that the form was
prepared to "receive the power of the superior [beings] ." An alternative explanation
of the teraphim, offered in the same place by Ibn Ezra, is that they were "an instru-
mentofcopper [namely an astrolabe, intended to] know the divisions of the hours."
Whereas one explanation indicates the astrological and divinatory aspects of the
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
teraphim without mentioning any metal, the other mentions a metal, but without
any explicit divinatory implications. It seems that the two views are not necessarily
presented as alternatives and that we may combine them so as to construe a metal-
lurgical anthropoid prepared in order to collect the supernal influxes and to predict
the future. This interpretation represents a drastic departure from the traditional
magical interpretation of the teraphim, as made from the skull of a murdered
person, which is prepared in a very meticulous way in order to foretell future things.
This view, occurring in the midrash, was strongly condemned by the Jewish
masters as implying idolatry. 56 However, at the beginning of the fourteenth cen-
tury, another illustrious Provencal philosopher and exegete, R. Levi ben Gershon,
known among Jews by the acronym Ralbag, and among Christians as Gersonides
or Leo Hebraeus, introduced a concept of the teraphim that was even closer to the
view of the "form" above. When commenting on the same passage in Genesis, he
asserts that "the teraphim are a form [having the configuration] of a man, made out
of metals, in certain specific hours known to them, by means of whom the imagina-
tive power of the magician will be aroused, and he will imagine that this form
speaks. In reality, however, this is [only] one of the acts of imagination." 57
According to a parallel discussion by the same author, the form tells the future
because the thought of the magician is concentrated on the question of the future. 58
Although R Levi ben Gershon's view of the teraphim is much closer to the one in
our epistle, it still misses an important element, which is already found in Ibn
Ezra's presentation of the topic: the crucial assumption that the metallic figure
captures the supernal powers. Deeply influenced by Aristotelian epistemology, Ibn
Ezra did not believe in the efficacy of this magical practice to obtain information
from outside human consciousness, but he assumed that such a practice was
sufficient to activate the human imagination so as to enhance or augment its activ-
ity. 59 A contemporary of Leo Hebraeus, R. Abraham ben Hananel of Esquira, 60 a
rather neglected figure of the early-fourteenth-century Soria in Castile, who later
left for the land of Israel, attests to the acquaintance of the Spanish Jews with Arabic
magic. In his voluminous kabbalistic treatise Yesod '01am, we learn that "just as there
are places that are a source of gems or of various kinds of gold but they disappear
when the elements have decayed, so also prophecy sometimes dwells upon the
prophet and at other times disappears. And because the masters of the talismans
knew this order, related to the demonic powers, they mixed two metals 61 or more at
a certain [specific] time and in a certain place and [by] special persons, and they
prepared a certain form [tzurah] and offered certain incenses until a pneumatic
power dwelled within the form, and this is called by them 'intizal al-ruhaniyat." 62
This is one of the earliest adoptions of the central terminology of astromagic in
a full-fledged kabbalistic book. As in our epistle, a metallic-astral rite causes the
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
descent of the pneuma. Moreover, in both cases this process is related to the
concept of prophecy. The Kabbalist considers this a possible, though forbidden,
practice, similar to that employed by the biblical creators of the Golden Calf 63
However, it is a natural event, similar to the creation of the gems and gold by the
astral influence, wherever the elements are able to absorb such an influx.
However, it was apparently David ibn Billya who first connected a fragment of
our text, probably based upon an Arabic original, to Ibn Ezra's interpretation of
the teraphim. Ibn Zarza's quotation from Ibn Billya does not stop with the passage
quoted above. In the final part, which follows immediately, we have: "This is the
reason they were called teraphim, from the verse 'For the teraphim have spoken
vanity' [Zechariah 10:2], because they are the cause of man's departure from true
happiness and his deviation toward imaginary happiness. This is why any worship
of anyone besides God was forbidden, because unless there is fear of this [namely
idolatry], there is no reason to prevent someone from [experiencing] its goodness.
The witnesses to this [fact] are the cherubim, 64 and the illuminated ones will con-
template it [the significance of the cherubim]." 65 Thus Ibn Billya hinted that the
technique involving the teraphim was the one described in our text, but that it was
interdicted because there was a danger of idolatry or astrolatry. Moreover, the
Portuguese Ibn Billya alluded to the affinity between the teraphim and the
cherubim, among the most sacrosanct figures in ancient Judaism, which dwelled
in the Holy of Holies. Ibn Billya intended this bold, metallic interpretation of the
cherubim to be understood in a positive way; though expressing the idea rather
obliquely, he seemed to imply that the two cherubim that were part of the Holy of
Holies, and the divine presence that dwelled between them and revealed herself
therefrom, performed their role as a receptacle of the Shekhinah because of their
anthropoid and metallic nature. 66 However, immediately after quoting this text
Ibn Zarza protests, exhorting God to safeguard someone from such a view. Even a
thinker like Ibn Zarza, who was audacious enough on other issues that he was
considered almost a heretic, 67 would not express explicit agreement with such a
far-reaching interpretation of some aspects of Judaism.
There is no doubt that at least since the age of Ibn Ezra, the idea of a metallic
figure that could foretell the future was related to astrology; it was accepted as an
accurate interpretation of the episode of the teraphim in Genesis 31, sometimes
positively and sometimes negatively, but the concept beyond it continued to attract
the curiosity of Jewish thinkers up to the Renaissance period. Ibn Ezra's audacity
in introducing novel astrological concepts into biblical exegesis prepared the
ground for the later use of even more explicit and bold concepts that may clarify
the hints of the twelfth-century exegete. As part of the continuous expansion of
Judaism, magical and astrological views — though not purely astrolatric ones —
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
rejected by the canonical texts in ancient period, were absorbed not only as part of
an attempt to understand the Bible but also as part of the development of more
comprehensive worldviews. Important segments of this process of expansion
survive in manuscripts, as some of the texts presented above attest, and the reli-
ance on printed material alone for a reconstruction of certain interpretations of
Judaism may be misleading. In the discussion above we have seen one example of
the fertilization of Jewish thought by alien sources. The Greek idea of divination as
related to the pneumata reached medieval Judaism through Arabic intermediaries,
and the Jewish authors used these to interpret the rather obscure practice of
divination related to the teraphim.
It is relevant here to emphasize the similarity between medieval Jewish
scholars' Greek-oriented interpretation of the ancient theologoumenon of the
teraphim and the more widespread medieval Jewish interpretation of the ancient
Jewish concept of prophecy by means of the Aristotelian epistemology as
understood by medieval Muslim thinkers. In both cases, the absorption of Greek
thought in its Muslim medieval metamorphoses fertilized various Jewish under-
standings of the scriptures, and in both cases the Greek material contributed to
the transformation of a nonnaturalistic, nonsystematic religion into a much more
naturalistic one. In the cases of the Maimonidean interpretation of prophecy and
in Ibn Ezra's understanding of the teraphim, psychological or astrological types of
order intruded into the ancient Jewish vision of religion, which was based upon
the preponderance of the divine will as decisive for understanding the most
important forms of religious events.
5. YOHANAN ALEMANNO'S ASTROMAGIC
In some instances the acceptance of the Greek- Arabic view of pneumatic magic was
connected with kabbalistic views. Ibn Zarza, however, was not a Kabbalist. This
syncretistic phenomenon became much more evident in Yohanan Alemanno's writ-
ings, under the substantial influence of the fourteenth-century Jewish author from
Castile, Ibn Zarza. Not only was the Italian Kabbalist aware of another technique for
attracting the pneumata into an artificial form, similar to the practice adumbrated
in the Hermetic treatise Asclepius, but also his view of the teraphim was a direct con-
tinuation of the views revealed in some of the discussions analyzed above. 68 So, for
example, we learn about the special status of the teraphim in Alemanno's gradation
of virtues: "The perfection of the moral virtues and the virtue of the intellect, the
perfection of divine worship [which consists of] various divinatory powers, and the
perfection of causing the descent of the spiritual powers by means of statues and
preparations of mixtures of qualities. And these [perfections are referred to by] four
names: Torah and Wisdom and the Ephod and the Teraphim." 69
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
It seems that there are good reasons to interpret the last of the four virtues as
the highest one, which is indeed an interesting repercussion of the medieval
anthropoidic view of the teraphim. 70 This elevation of astromagic to such a high
status is pertinent to Alemanno's more general understanding of the ideal struc-
ture of different forms of knowledge and accords with his hierarchical organiza-
tion of a variety of medieval speculative corpora when he formulated in his
Collectanea an ideal curriculum that culminated in magic. 71
However, it seems to me that we may even find evidence of the influence of Ibn
Zarza's text in Alemanno's discussion of another type of anthropoid. In his unti-
tled treatise Alemanno describes the wisdom of the ancients as follows: "[It] was
so vast that they boasted of it in their books, which they attributed to Enoch, whom
the Lord has taken, 72 and to Solomon, who was wiser than any man, and to many
perfect men who performed actions of intermingling various things and balanc-
ing [literally: comparing] qualities in order to create new forms [tzurot hadashot] 73
in gold, silver, vegetables, minerals, and animals that had never before existed,
and to create divine forms that foretell the future, laws, nomoi, and spirits of
angels, of stars, and of devils by the changes of their constitution, which is the
reason for the differences among men, be these [differences] great or small." 74
Unlike the other instances, in which Alemanno refers both to Ashkenazi lin-
guistic recipes for creating Golems and to Abulafia's mystical technique, as seen
in the previous chapter, here he refers to metal as a constituent of the anthropoid.
Like Ibn Billya's and Ibn Zarza's texts discussed above, this anthropoid reveals the
future. Alemanno's description of the anthropoid combines a variety of sources:
ancient Jewish ones, Hermetic, and metallurgic. Since he was undoubtedly
acquainted with Ibn Zarza's book, 75 we may assume as certain that he was influ-
enced by one of the passages adduced above. The creation of new forms is
described in Hermetic terms, as the combinations of the various reigns demon-
strate. Since the aim of this creation is to build an entity that foretells the future, it
is reasonable to assume that the forms are identical with the statues constructed
by the Hermetic and Neoplatonic magicians and consequently have human form.
If so, then the artificially created human form, like the calf, served to capture the
emanation from above.
Clearly, this Renaissance Jewish author combined diverse Jewish esoteric sources
with Hermetic and astrometallurgical theories in a manner reminiscent of what
F. A. Yates called the "occult philosophy." 76 Thus, Yates's description of Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola as the "instigator and the founder" of the Hermetic-kabbalistic
synthesis is correct only if it is understood to refer to Christian thought alone. 77
The famous Isaac Abravanel, who was not a Kabbalist, also testified to the exis-
tence of Islamic texts dealing with natural preparations of anthropoids that can be
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
understood as explaining a talmudic discussion of the anthropoid in the Sanhedrin.
In a commentary on i Kings 3 he wrote: "All these things were known to him in the
same way in which they are known to nature, so that he could create natural crea-
tures by means of natural things for a certain moment, by the path of what is men-
tioned by the sages of the Talmud, concerning the man that was made by Rava.
And according to his opinion it was the operation of the natural technique. . . .
And it was already found among the Ishmailite nations, in books attributed, inter
alia, to King Solomon, that deal with this sort [of topics]." 78
The mention of Solomon in this context is reminiscent of Alemanno's mention
of him in the passage quoted above from his untitled treatise. It is an interesting
question whether Alemanno in fact influenced Abravanel or whether they drew
upon common sources. However, even more interesting is the occurrence of this
theme in two Jewish authors in northern Italy in the same period. Both are inclined
to see the generation of the artificial anthropoid as a natural phenomenon, and
both ignore the linguistic magic of the Ashkenazi Hasidim, as derived from some
interpretation of Sefer Yetzimh, when dealing with this specific issue.
Ibn Zarza's Meqor Hayyim was printed in Mantua in 1559. 79 The very act of print-
ing this commentary, as well as another commentary on Ibn Ezra, Mecjillat Setarim,
by R. Shemuel ibn Motot, 8 ° seems to indicate renewed interest in astrology and
magic among Renaissance Jews. Moreover, as Stephane Toussaint has pointed
out, the astromagic of Ibn Zarza also influenced Marsilio Ficino, who explicitly
refers to the passage by Ibn Zarza quoting Ibn Billya quoted above. 81
As we saw in chapter 20, the impact of some Jewish themes related to the arti-
ficial creation of men and souls is also evident in a famous discussion of this topic
by Ludovico Lazzarelli, an acquaintance of Ficino's. 82 Although Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola seems to ignore the issue of the Golem in his description of
Kabbalah, it is clear that his nephew, Giovanni Francesco, was acquainted with
the talmudic story. 8 ' Nevertheless, it may be assumed that the tenth of Pico's
Magical Conclusions has to do with the artificial creation of a man: "What man the
magus makes through art, nature made naturally in making man." 84 It seems that
the magician is capable of doing artificially what nature does naturally. Given the
fact that three of Pico's acquaintances, Alemanno, Lazzarelli and Ficino, were
interested in the Golem and similar types of recipes, it would be strange if he had
ignored such a topic. It is also clear from the works of Johann Reuchlin and
Cornelius Agrippa of Netesheim that the next generations of Christian Kabbalists
were interested in the concept of the Golem. 85 Pico, like Alemanno, was less inter-
ested in the linguistic technique of generating the Golem by combining letters,
and much more inclined to a naturalistic approach, based on a combination of
diverse components.
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
Thus we may assume a trajectory of astromagic and Hermeticism from Arabic
sources in the Middle East and North Africa in early Middle Ages and from Jewish
sources mainly in Spain in the late Middle Ages to some circles of Italian Jews
in the Renaissance. The writings of Ibn Zarza played a significant role in this
transmission of Arabic astromagic. 86
6. Kabbalah and Magic in the Renaissance
The discussions above demonstrate that in Renaissance Florence, interest in
magical aspects of Kabbalah increased among both Jewish and Christian thinkers.
No less interesting is the fact that a nonmagical form of Kabbalah was interpreted
astromagically by Alemanno. This is not an extraordinary case; it reflects develop-
ments in the thirteenth century (as we have seen in chapter 12) that became more
visible and influential at the end of the fifteenth century, partly as a result of
the arrival of Arabic traditions. Although Ficino's translations drew chiefly upon
Greek sources in his discussions of astromagic, for both Jews and Christians
Hermes/Enoch was a major legendary hero, and the two figures were sometimes
conflated, as in the cases of Lazzarelli and his master, Giovanni da Correggio, who
also called himself Enoch and Mercury, namely Hermes.
Another important phenomenon relevant to an understanding of the spiritual
configuration of Christian Kabbalah is the emergence of Latin translations
made by Flavius Mithridates for Pico della Mirandola. Chaim Wirszubski studied
Mithridates' translations closely and identified the Christian and magical sources
that the translator added in Latin to the original kabbalistic texts in Hebrew. 87 His
analyses, based on careful comparisons of the translations with the Hebrew origi-
nals, contributed directly to a better understanding of specific details of Pico's
thought, especially his association between Kabbalah and magic. 88 In a manner
reminiscent of Alemanno's juxtaposition of the different ways of understanding
the Golem, including Abulafia's passage, Mithridates translated, sometimes with-
out pointing out that he had altered them, passages from ecstatic Kabbalah as
though they represented the views of a magically oriented Kabbalist. 89
What is interesting for the further development of Kabbalah is that astromagi-
cal understandings of the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah moved increasingly
to the center of thought of a major Kabbalist, R Moshe Cordovero in mid-
sixteenth-century Safed, 90 and that he and his followers contributed much to the
dissemination of this emphasis among larger audiences and shaped some vital
aspects of eighteenth-century Hasidism in Ukraine and Poland. 91 1 am not sure
that the Renaissance magical interpretations contributed much to Safedian devel-
opments in magic, since we have sufficient kabbalistic material from early-
fifteenth-century Spain, especially the writings of R Shem Tov ben Shem Tov, that
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
certainly inspired the Safedian Kabbalists R. Shlomo Alqabetz and Moshe
Cordovero. 92 Even in early-sixteenth-century Jerusalem, a magical Kabbalist like
R Joseph ibn Tzayyah, who was, like Alemanno, a prolific writer, could offer
a synthesis between theosophical-theurgical and ecstatic Kabbalah and some
forms of magic. 93 Abulafia's ecstatic Kabbalah was interpreted in magical terms
in the book of another kabbalistic author in early-sixteenth-century Jerusalem,
R. Yehudah Albotini. 94 The halakhic background of these Jerusalem Kabbalists
did not deter them from incorporating magical elements into their writings. This
was also the case for Cordovero, who was preoccupied with rabbinic studies but
nevertheless adopted an astromagical understanding of kabbalistic theosophy.
Thus, Alemanno's synthesis of these different trends, each of them found
earlier in many texts in independent literary corpora, has parallel results in a
Kabbalist writing in the Near East, and independent of the Renaissance ambiance
in Florence. Whether Ibn Tzayyah or Albotini met Alemanno when the latter
presumably traveled to Jerusalem in his old age cannot be ascertained with any
confidence. Recent studies indicate that it is much more plausible that the
Jerusalem Kabbalists had an impact on the Safedian Kabbalah. 95
Last but not least: during Alemanno's youth a huge kabbalistic corpus was
composed in Spain, probably in Castile, known by the title Sefer ha-Meshiu. In this
literature, little of it in print, and rather neglected in modern scholarship, some
astromagical themes are evident, and they also occur in kabbalistic contexts
dominated by theosophical thought, as in the case of Ibn Tzayyah's voluminous
books, also surviving only in manuscripts. However, unlike Alemanno's magical
Kabbalah, the Spanish corpus was much more concerned with demonic powers
and apocalyptic ruptures and expressed strongly anti-Christian attitudes. 96 When
we consider together the three major kabbalistic corpora written in this period,
namely Alemanno's writings, Ibn Tzayyah's works, and Sefer ha-Meshiu and its suc-
cessors, we can discern a major reshaping of the older theosophical-theurgical
and ecstatic writings through the incorporation of a variety of magical approaches,
especially the astromagical one. Different as the syntheses between Kabbalah and
magic in those literary corpora are, their occurrence in the very same period
reflects a growing interest in magical thinking in Jewish elite groups as well as in
the Florentine Christian elite. This concomitant ascent of magic in different
regions and intellectual circles may not be a matter of pure coincidence, but part
of a turn to a more performative approach that allowed a much greater role for
human activity and sought some form of tangible results from ritual activities. The
synthesis between magic and Kabbalah was not the achievement of Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola in Florence, as assumed by Dame Frances A. Yates, 97 or of his
teacher and companion Yohanan Alemanno. It has a much longer history, and it
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ASTROMAGICAL PNEUMATIC ANTHROPOIDS
surfaces at the same time in all the major centers of Kabbalah and not only in Italy.
This phenomenon reflects the complexity that is characteristic of many traditional
forms of knowledge as they interact with, integrate, absorb, and organize more
and more forms of relevant knowledge within their traditions. Sometimes those
processes produce more cohesive results, and sometimes less. Eclecticism is a
phenomenon that occasionally develops when major literatures that differ from
each other interact with and interpret each other, what I call the intercorporal
phenomenon. 98 Magical literature of both Arabic and Jewish extraction, linguistic,
alchemical, and astromagical, entered into strong interactions that produced the
Florentine Jewish and Christian synthetic systems in the late fifteenth century,
with the eclectic mode becoming more and more pronounced in sixteenth-century
occultist writings in Europe.
•286-
22
THE TRAJECTORY OF EASTERN
KABBALAH AND ITS REVERBERATIONS
IN ITALY
i. Jewish Thinkers from the East and Italy
So far we have looked at material that arrived in Italy from the West: Spain,
Provence, the rest of France, and different parts of Germany. Great parts of the
structure of this esoteric knowledge were indebted to Greek, Hellenistic, and
Jewish material that had arrived in those places still earlier from the Near East.
However, there was also another trajectory of knowledge to Italy in this period,
originating with Jews active in areas to the east. The main area pertinent to our
discussion is Crete, where a Jewish community had flourished since the fourteenth
century, and which maintained strong relations with Venice, which governed the
island.
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The Trajectory of Eastern Kabbalah
The earliest of the Jews to arrive in Italy from Crete and to play a significant role
in Jewish culture there was R Shemaryah Ikriti. He was a philosophically oriented
thinker, active at the court of Robert of Anjou in Naples in the first part of the four-
teenth century, and he perhaps had some prophetic and messianic leanings. 1 His
father, R Elijah Romanus, a leader of the Candian community in Crete, is described
as having gone there from Rome. 2 Shemaryah was in contact with the Jewish com-
munity in Rome, as we learn from an epistle to it in which he describes his literary
activity. 3 In the letter he portrays himself as the pen of the cosmic Agent Intellect,
cleaving to which he asserts is possible. 4 Although he does not describe this expe-
rience as a mystical one, it nevertheless implies some form of prophetic stance, in
a manner reminiscent of his older contemporary Dante Alighieri — who describes
the prophets as scribes of the one dictator, God — and of R Yehudah Romano. 5
Indeed, Dante was well known in the circle of Jewish intellectuals related to
R. Shemaryah, R Yehudah Romano, and Immanuel of Rome. 6 However, there can
be no doubt that Shemaryah's main contribution was in the domain of Jewish
philosophy and not of Kabbalah.
In the 1470s or 1480s Elijah del Medigo, originally from Candia, arrived in
northern Italy and translated Averroistic treatises into Latin, was in close contact
with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and then returned, perhaps intellectually
disappointed, to Candia. More important from the point of view of the history of
Kabbalah, in Candia around 1470 there arose a controversy on the meaning
and role of the kabbalistic concept of transmigration of the soul, and the various
documents connected with it survive in manuscripts in the Vatican library. 7 The
descendant of one of the participants in this controversy, R Shaul ha-Kohen, a
critic of the kabbalistic stand, arrived in Venice and had some discussions with
Isaac Abravanel. 8
Last but not least, we should take into account a Jew who never came to Italy but
whose influence there was perhaps greater than that of all the previously men-
tioned persons, the mysterious Elisha of Constantinople. According to George
Scholarios, a critic of the more famous Gemistos Plethon and hence perhaps not a
reliable witness, it is possible that one of Plethon's teachers in Byzantium was a
Jew named Elisha, who was acquainted with Averroistic philosophy and medicine
and with Zoroastrian thought. 9 He was presumably the source of Plethon's con-
ception of Zoroaster as an independent and reliable religious source. According to
Scholarios, Elisha, though a Jew, flouted the Mosaic tradition and was burned
alive as a heretic. 10 If we may believe Scholarios, Elisha made a modest contribu-
tion to the subsequent infiltration of pagan theurgy found in the Chaldaean Oracles
(a book allegedly authored by Zoroaster) into the Renaissance via Plethon and
Ficino.
The Trajectory of Eastern Kabbalah
Nevertheless, it is possible that this Elisha was not as much a pagan and a Hellene
as Scholarios presented him. There was in existence also a Persian-Arab tradition to
the effect that Zoroaster was a pupil of Jeremiah," while according to other Jewish
sources Zoroaster studied with Abraham. 12 Thus, using the name of Zoroaster in
Hebrew sources would not automatically invite a multilinear vision of knowledge.
Following the view of some scholars, it is plausible that Elisha was part of a school
of mystics originating with the twelfth-century Muslim Sufi master Suhrawardi
al-Maqtul, called Ishraqi (The Illuminated), an Oriental author, who regarded
Zoroaster as an important religious thinker. 13 If this proposal is correct, we have
another instance of Jewish mediation of an Arabic view to Renaissance Florence.
2. Byzantine Kabbalah: From Abulafia and
Recanati to Yohanan Alemanno
The eastward movement of kabbalistic literatures and individuals from Spain did
not stop at Italy. Since the late thirteenth century it had also included the Byzantine
Empire. In fact, before arriving in Italy for the second time, when he was already a
Kabbalist, Abulafia taught in the Peloponnese and had some students there.
Although his estimation of these students was far from high, we cannot preclude
the possibility that some of them were the first Byzantine Kabbalists. In any case,
in 1279 Abulafia wrote in Patras the first of his many prophetic writings, Sefer
ha-Yashar, which he brought to Italy, and in Messina he wrote a commentary on it. 14
Sefer ha-Yashar is therefore the first kabbalistic work written in Byzantium and also
the first one imported to Italy from that region. In my opinion, Abulafia's sojourn
in the Peloponnese is related to the continued preeminence in that area of his
version of Kabbalah. I suspect, for example, that one of Abulafia's commentaries
on the secrets found in the Guide of the Perplexed, Sefer Hayyei ha-Nefesh, was written
between 1274 and 1279 in the Byzantine region, since a passage from the book was
copied verbatim, albeit without attribution, in an important treatise on Kabbalah,
Sefer ha-Peliy'ah, written there. 15 In the same work the anonymous Kabbalist
copied Abulafia's Sefer Gan Na'ul almost in its entirety, again without mentioning
the author or the title. 16 In my opinion, several other pages of Sefer ha-Peliy'ah
reflect the strong influence of Abulafia's ecstatic Kabbalah and may contain other
quotations from lost books belonging to ecstatic Kabbalah. 17
Sefer ha-Peliy'ah also contains several quotations from R Menahem Recanati's
Commentary on the Torah, again without attribution. 18 Although this book also lifts
passages from books written in Spain, and perhaps elsewhere, the Italian contri-
bution to its contents is substantial. In fact, we may describe it as a conflation of
Italian and Spanish forms of Kabbalah with kabbalistic material written in the
Byzantine Empire in the mid-fourteenth century. Because of the manifest impact
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The Trajectory of Eastern Kabbalah
of both Abulafia's and Recanati's forms of Italian Kabbalah, Aharon (Adolph)
Jellinek was inclined to suggest that either the book was written in northern Italy
or it was written in Greece sometime around 1450. "> However, as Israel M. Ta-Shma
and Michal Kushnir-Oron demonstrated, there are good reasons to situate the
author of the book in the Byzantine Empire sometime at the end of the fourteenth
century. 20
Abulafia's and Recanati's Kabbalah were, however, not the only brands of this
lore that arrived in the Byzantine Empire in the fourteenth century. It is now known
that a Spanish Kabbalist, R. Shem Tov of Folia, arrived there sometime in the mid-
fourteenth century. 21 The tenor of his Kabbalah differs from the varieties that we
know about in Spain and Italy, especially with regard to the theory of the cosmic
cycles, or shemittot. Unlike the most widespread views found in some groups of
Spanish Kabbalists, subscribing to a general correspondence between the seven
lower sefirot and the seven cosmic cycles, 22 Shem Tov articulated a view — found
earlier in less developed form — that out of the seven cycles of thousands or seven
thousand years, ours is related to the sefirah Gevurah, namely the sefirah of strict
judgment, which means that we are in the worst cosmic period. 23
A more extreme version of this theory appears in an anonymous treatise titled
Sefer ha-Temunah or Sefer ha-Temunot, dealing mainly with the theosophical signifi-
cance of the shapes of the Hebrew letters, which is part of a broader kabbalistic
literature that still awaits scholarly analysis. In these writings the view that the pres-
ent shemiftah (cosmic cycle) is governed by the worst of the divine powers is rein-
forced by the assertion that the structure of the Torah has been determined by this
pernicious power. There is here a strong affinity between an astrological under-
standing of reality on the one hand, and the nature of the Jewish religion, including
the Torah and its commandments, on the other. 24 The deterministic picture of the
world as stemming from the astrological order influenced the main structure of
theosophy in this circle of Kabbalists, and created the conditions for the emergence
of kabbalistic antinomianism. Gershom Scholem assumed that the book was writ-
ten in Gerona either in the 1260s 25 or at the end of the thirteenth century. 26 Efraim
Gottlieb voiced doubts to his students about both the dating and the locale of com-
position. For reasons that I have elaborated upon elsewhere, I propose to see the
mid-fourteenth century as the time and the Byzantine Empire as the place in which
both this book and the commentary written on it were composed. 27 The most
important reason is that the author of Sefer ha-Peliy'ah copied significant chunks
from Sefer ha-Temunah, again without attribution, in his other book, Sefer ha-Qanah,
a lengthy commentary on the rationales of the commandments. 28
These two Byzantine kabbalistic books, composed sometime around the end of
the fourteenth century, blend three types of Kabbalah that were almost totally
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The Trajectory of Eastern Kabbalah
unknown in the Iberian peninsula: the anomian Kabbalah of Abulafia and his
circle, the nomian Kabbalah of Recanati, and the antinomian Kabbalah from
the circle of Sefer ha-Temunah. The religious possibilities immanent in such a
synthesis remained part and parcel of the Byzantine, and later the Ottoman,
center of Kabbalah, and ultimately contributed to the spiritual physiognomy of
Sabbateanism. The chief protagonist of this messianic movement, Sabbatai Tzevi,
was, in my opinion, very much a Byzantine Kabbalist even two centuries after the
disappearance of the Byzantine Empire. 29 In one of the processes of the transfor-
mation of Kabbalah when it moved eastward, Spain originated the development of
most of the nomian forms of Kabbalah, which had a huge impact everywhere in
the Jewish world, and in Italy on Recanati. In another, Italy hosted the origination
of the anomian Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia and his followers, which had an
impact on the Byzantine Empire and the land of Israel. 30 Finally, the Byzantine
Empire hosted the emergence of antinomian Kabbalah, which had a limited
impact in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but made an important contribu-
tion to Sabbateanism in the seventeenth century. 31 This development had much to
do with the weakness of the rabbinic establishments in Italy and Byzantium, 32 in
comparison to Spain, France, and Ashkenaz. Kabbalists who could not find a
place in Spain because of their idiosyncratic views and the centralized structure of
Jewish society in the Iberian peninsula were more easily accepted in Italy and even
more so in the Byzantine Empire, though there, too, as the resort to anonymity
demonstrates, antinomianism constituted a problem in Jewish society even in that
region. This seems to be one of the reasons why such diverse Kabbalists as
Abraham Abulafia and R. Shem Tov of Folia left Spain and flourished elsewhere.
Why did the anonymous author of Sefer ha-Peliy'ah steal so unabashedly from so
many kabbalistic sources? The answer is relatively simple: the book is presented
as if it was written by three generations of scholars in late antiquity who had
discussions among themselves, but from time to time there are some revelations
by the prophet Elijah. 33 This pseudepigraphic framework precluded any acknowl-
edgment of the numerous sources that were copied. To my best knowledge, no
Kabbalist in Spain ever quoted this book, or Sefer ha-Temunah, or the other books
from this school.
Outside Byzantium, to my best knowledge Yohanan Alemanno was the first to
quote Sefer ha-Peliy'ah and Sefer ha-Temunah. The arrival of these books in Italy
sometime in the mid-fifteenth century influenced not only the Jewish Kabbalist
but also two of the most important authors of the second phase of Christian
Kabbalah, the cardinal Egidio da Viterbo and Francesco Giorgio Veneto.
The most conspicuous quotation from Sefer ha-Peliy'ah — which Alemanno
mistakenly calls Sefer ha-Qanah — is found in his Collectanea, where he adduces one of
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The Trajectory of Eastern Kabbalah
the computations that prognosticate that the messianic redemption will occur in
the year 1490. 34 Since there is no remark to the effect that the redemption has not
yet come, I assume that Alemanno copied this material before 1490. In his own
book, 'Einei ha-'Edah, the title Qanah. ben Qanah recurs several times. 35 In his untitled
treatise, the theories of shemittot recur several times, in my opinion under the influ-
ence of these Byzantine books. 36 What seems to me more interesting beyond those
quotations is the fact that Alemanno adopted from Sefer ha-Peliy'ah a vision of
history as a continuous confrontation between good and evil, a theory that is pre-
sented at the end of his Hei ha-'OIamim; but this demands a separate inquiry. Thus
Alemanno adopted from the Byzantine Kabbalah a quite pessimistic and determin-
istic vision of history, which differs dramatically from the various theories found in
the Italian and Spanish types of Kabbalah. Given that Alemanno was acquainted
also with the views of both R. Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim and R. Yehudah Hayyat, the two
Spanish Kabbalists who were his contemporaries and his critics, we may describe
Florence in the late fifteenth century as the place where most — though certainly
not all — of the main types of existent kabbalistic literature were available.
Alemanno integrated these various forms of Kabbalah into his hierarchical
schemes describing a schedule for advanced studies, as we shall see in appendix 4.
The mediating role of Italy, mentioned above in chapter 12, is more evident in the
variety of kabbalistic literatures known in late-fifteenth-century Italy. 37
Although in my opinion Alemanno's references to the Byzantine books occurred
relatively late in his career, and their impact on his thought is certainly less
substantial than that of his Italian predecessors, they reflect once more the special
status of Kabbalah in Italy: much material arrived from a variety of sources and was
adopted and integrated into much larger structures, without inciting polemics.
This is the most important example of an influence on Kabbalah in Italy from
kabbalistic sources written east of the peninsula. It made itself felt relatively late in
Alemanno's career, at the very end of the fifteenth century. In the next century the
center of kabbalistic creativity moved abruptly and dramatically from the Iberian
peninsula to the land of Israel, and to a certain extent to the Ottoman Empire, and
starting in the mid-sixteenth century the numerous kabbalistic writings composed
there started to arrive in Italy and reshape the configuration of Kabbalah in the
Apennine peninsula. Did Alemanno contribute some modest share to the strength-
ening of this east-to-west trajectory by his presumed trip to Jerusalem? In any case,
his much younger acquaintance, R. David ben Yehudah Messer Leon, undoubtedly
did so when he moved from northern Italy to the Ottoman Empire, and wrote there
some kabbalistic discussions that reached and were debated by a leading Safedian
Kabbalist, R. Moshe Cordovero. 38
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CONCLUDING REMARKS
i. Kabbalah in Italy or Italian Kabbalah?
"Kabbalah in Italy" and "Italian Kabbalah" are, to be sure, merely umbrella terms,
neither more coherent nor less precarious than designations such as Spanish,
Byzantine, North African, and Safedian Kabbalah. The diversity of their contents
notwithstanding, the use of such terms may serve both important historical and
phenomenological aims. First and foremost, it is an efficient way of demarcating
the specific books and schools that developed in a certain area from the huge
kabbalistic literatures and of dealing only with those that did interact with their
specific surrounding more than other works written elsewhere. Equally important,
the awareness that a certain kabbalistic literature, however diverse, was available in
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Concluding Remarks
a certain geographical area contributes to a better understanding both of sub-
sequent developments in Jewish Kabbalah in that area, and of why, for example,
Christian interests in Kabbalah moved in one direction or another. Thus the
existence of so many manuscripts of Abraham Abulafia's writings in libraries
located in the Italian territories certainly contributed to their being translated into
Latin and Italian during the Renaissance, and to his having a greater influence on
Christian Kabbalists in Italy than on Jewish Kabbalists in Spain, both immediately
before and after the expulsion. Repetition of certain ideas creates a certain struc-
ture of thought, which even if not intentionally different from other forms of
thought, by the very act of putting in relief some ideas and not others, produces
tendencies specific to one area and not to another.
Those statistical and historical understandings may, in turn, be usefully trans-
lated into more penetrating observations regarding the spiritual physiognomy of
some phenomena in the early Florentine Renaissance, such as the propensity for
prophecy 1 in the discussions and portraits of Giovanni Mercurio da Coreggio,
Girolamo Savonarola, Giovanni Pico, Marsilio Ficino, Francesco da Meleto, and
other, minor figures. 2 To be sure, not all discussions of prophecy in Florence neces-
sarily reflect ties to Abulafia's Kabbalah, and Savonarola's De Veritate Prophetica may
well stand quite independent of any influence from ecstatic Kabbalah. However,
when Giovanni Pico and Ficino are described as looking for an experience of
"prophecy," this cautious approach to the impact of ecstatic Kabbalah is much less
relevant. 3 I know no better alternative found in Florence in Hebrew, Italian, and
Latin to explain a search for prophecy by means of Kabbalah than Abulafia's books.
To be sure, the methods adopted by the Christian thinkers in their search for
prophecy were more complex than just adopting Abraham Abulafia's Kabbalah as
a pure model, and the lessons we learn from detailed analyses of Yohanan
Alemanno's conceptual hierarchies as described in chapters 14 and 20, showing
that ecstatic material was embedded in philosophical magical and talismanic
material, are profoundly relevant to some developments in late Quattrocento
Florence. Thus, understanding the genesis of Abulafia's prophetology from the
confluence ofMaimonides' theories of cognition, Ashkenazi practices, and a vari-
ety of other elements, and understanding the additions that Alemanno made to it
by drawing upon many other sources, including astromagical ones, may offer a
better ground for understanding the two leading figures in Florence: Giovanni Pico
and Ficino. Alemanno was not only interested in ecstatic Kabbalah, which he held
in high esteem; he also combined it with the philosophical ideal of intuitive know-
ledge in an interesting observation found in his Collectanea. When quoting two
passages from Hayyei ha-'OIam ha-Ba' he introduces Abulafia's characterization of
the true Kabbalist as "combining letters" and as one who seeks the "sudden
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Concluding Remarks
intuition [hashqqfah pit'omit] 4 about all the sciences of the existence [kol madda'ei
ha-nimtza'ot] by means of combinations of the divine name." 5 This brief remark is
itself a combination of a philosophical vision, stemming ultimately from Plotinus
via Avicenna, and to a certain extent also Maimonides, with an ecstatic kabbalistic
one. Though not totally new as a concept — it is found, in principle but not in a
specific terminological expression, in a reference by R. Moshe Narboni (one of
Alemanno's most venerated intellectual heroes) to Abulafia's Sejer 'Or ha-Sekhel 6 —
this combination of Ashkenazi linguistic technique with Avicenna's theory of intu-
ition is totally new in the history of Kabbalah. It reflects the affinity between the
philosophical treatment of the superiority of intuition over discursive knowledge,
which had probably influenced Abulafia's own Kabbalah, 7 and Abulafia's ideal of
an easy attainment of a mystical experience. This concern with intuition is evident
also in Marsilio Ficino's thought, and he, too, may have been influenced by the
Avicennan theory of intuition. 8 Elsewhere Alemanno connects "sudden vision," or
intuition, with a faculty in the soul of man that he calls ha-tziyyur ha-'Elohi, "the
divine conceptualization," which allows the vision and contemplation of the
"world of the sefirah," which for him means the world of the ten sefirot. 9
That this theory of sublime gnoseology to be realized via manipulation of
language, which was understood as prophecy, had an impact on one of the most
important exponents of Christian Kabbalah, we learn from a passage by Paulus
Riccius. The views of this very learned early-sixteenth-century Ashkenazi convert
to Christianity — whom Erasmus pertinently compared to no other than Flavius
Mithridates — had a huge impact on JohannReuchlin's understanding of Kabbalah.
In one instance he claims:
The Kabbalists and those who are called sons of the prophets proceed from
the connection of the human mind with the higher and purer one. They
take the symbols and the elements that are connected with the higher spirit as
far as they can use them for their purpose. They meditate on the holy letters by
contemplating their numerical value, their form, position, permutation, and
combination, by thinking of their genus and referring and bringing them to
the holiness of higher and eternal truths. No Kabbalist believes that he has
completely exhausted or will completely understand the holy communication
of the prophets. He intends only one thing: to convert his soul from earthly
matter through the concentrated and repeated exercise of fantasy, reason,
and mind and be transported to the upper forces in order to join with them. 10
Kabbalists are therefore explicitly called "sons of prophets," a biblical term
related to small groups who used pneumatic techniques to reach a prophetic
experience. The Kabbalists are portrayed as contemplating and manipulating
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Concluding Remarks
linguistic elements in order to attain a supreme experience, described in terms of
imagination and intellect, in a manner quite reminiscent of Abulafia's ecstatic
Kabbalah. Thus, Paulus Riccius, like Giovanni Pico and Ficino, can be better
understood against the more solid background of the existence of pneumatic con-
cerns (as well as others) among Jewish Italian Kabbalists, rather than by an overly
generalized view of Kabbalah. Surely the more experiential dimension of ecstatic
Kabbalah, which developed strongly in the Italian regions, contributes more to an
understanding of those two Italian figures — as well as Riccius — than does assum-
ing, quite anachronistically, that the less experiential Kabbalists arriving in Italy
from Spain after the expulsion contributed to the emergence of Christian Kabbalah,
a phenomenon that started several years before the expulsion. This understanding
of Kabbalah as automatically Spanish Kabbalah is evident even in the writings of
important scholars describing the emergence of the Christian Kabbalah. So, for
example, we read in Frances A. Yates, when she was describing the spiritual back-
ground of Christian Kabbalah: "There is a wealth of spiritual experience waiting to
be gathered from the great surge of interest in Jewish mysticism spread by the
wandering exiles from Spain and Portugal." 11
In my opinion, the emergence of the Christian brand of Kabbalah can be under-
stood only in the context of the specific kabbalistic literatures and schools that
were available in a given time and place, in our case in late-fifteenth-century
Florence, or in Italy in more general terms.
Let me attempt to situate the kabbalistic literature written in Italy in relation to
other forms of Jewish religious literature. There can be no doubt that before 1500,
in fields such as Halakhah, philosophy, biblical interpretation, and even poetry,
the Italian production was dramatically smaller than the aggregate amount of
these literatures produced in Spain, France, or Germany 12 — a situation that would
change substantially in the sixteenth century. However, in the field of Kabbalah,
the situation in Italy was quite different. Although Italian production was smaller
than that of Spanish Kabbalah and perhaps even of Byzantine Kabbalah, it was
more diverse than both of them. Abulafia, Recanati, and Alemanno in particular
produced significant, influential, and distinctive types of Kabbalah that diverged
dramatically from each other in many respects.
Moreover, only in Italy did major Christian intellectuals absorb so many
kabbalistic views, even though sometimes twisting the original kabbalistic
intentions, to produce a literature of Christian Kabbalah. 1 ' The uniqueness of this
development reflects something of the nature of Jewish Kabbalah in the area.
Religious phenomena are defined not only by the insiders but also by the outsiders,
even when the insiders would protest against the appropriation and the eventual
distortion of what they may understand as their authentic tradition. 14
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Concluding Remarks
The Italian territories were assuredly a center of Kabbalah in the period under
scrutiny; the views of prominent Kabbalists active and creative there influenced
other Italian Kabbalists in the sixteenth century, and some of them found their
way to Byzantine Kabbalah. No less important is the fact, already noted in chapter
7, that Italian manuscripts of Kabbalah are so numerous that they constitute a
substantial proportion of all the extant manuscripts of Kabbalah in the world, and
they are a basic component of any serious research in this domain.
2. Italian Kabbalah and Abraham Abulafia's Writings
Spanish Kabbalah has its classic book: the Zohar. The book was translated into
Hebrew and commented upon and imitated by Spanish Kabbalists in the first gen-
eration after its appearance. 15 In contrast, the Italian Kabbalists in the same period
did not focus on one central book. As we saw in chapter 9, even Recanati, who
referred to the Zohar so often in his writings, misconstrued and thus transformed its
basic theosophy, interpreting it as if it assigned an instrumental status to the sefirot.
Certainly, Spanish Kabbalists newly arrived in Italy after the expulsion had — and
expressed — their own prejudices against Italian developments in Kabbalah, as
we have seen from R. Yehudah Hayyat's list of "pernicious" kabbalistic books,
discussed above in chapter 18. Of the three Kabbalists whom Yehudah Hayyat
criticized — R. Yitzhaq ibn Latif, R. Shmuel ibn Motot, and Abraham Abulafia — Ibn
Latif, though far less well known in the Iberian peninsula than in Italy, had already
been criticized by Spanish Kabbalists in the mid-fourteenth century.' 6 The attack on
R. Shmuel ibn Motot, who presented another type of synthesis between Kabbalah
and philosophy, was not as vicious as that against "the many books" of Abraham
Abulafia; we may assume that the wider the dissemination of a Kabbalist's works
was, the more incentive Hayyat had to challenge him.
The Italian Kabbalist Yohanan Alemanno was acquainted with all the kabbalistic
writings mentioned by Hayyat. The curriculum he constructed moves from earlier
to later works, from the low to the sublime, implying also a movement from less
important to more advanced forms of Kabbalah. Although Motot influenced sev-
eral passages in Alemanno's writings,' 7 he was not included in Alemanno's study
program. Ibn Latif is mentioned relatively early. The books of Abulafia stand at the
very end of the curriculum.' 8 An inspection of Alemanno's texts shows that he knew
two of the three of books by Abulafia included in Hayyat's list.' 9 We may therefore
conclude that Alemanno's predilections reflect a situation that corroborates
Hayyat's critique.
Another Kabbalist active in Italy around 1500, in the region of Venice, R. Asher
Lemlein, was also very fond of Abulafia's Kabbalah. He does not mention Motot
and Ibn Latif at all, but traces of Abulafia's views are conspicuous in his extant
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Concluding Remarks
writings. He mentions Sefer Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba' three times, always in very
laudatory terms. 20
As for Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's knowledge of Kabbalah and the transla-
tions made for him, I have shown elsewhere that in his Heptaplus Pico demon-
strates an acquaintance with Ibn Latif s Sha'ar ha-Shamayim, 21 although this book
was not translated into Latin. He does not appear to have known Motot's work. In
contrast, many of Abulafia's books were translated by Mithridates and were deeply
influential on Pico's Christian Kabbalah, as Chaim Wirszubski convincingly
showed in his classic work Pico della Mirandola.
Last but not least, as Robert Bonfil has already indicated, Sefer 'Or ha-Sekhel, one of
Abulafia's main mystical handbooks and one of the writings sharply criticized by
Hayyat, was well known in Italy. 22 Indeed, the great number of Italian manuscripts of
Abulafia's works demonstrates the attraction his Kabbalah exercised in Italy from
the time ofhis arrival in Sicily, attaining one of its peaks in the Florentine Renaissance.
3. Menahem Recanati's Kabbalistic Descendants
So far as we know, Abulafia had several direct disciples, but no one in his family
continued his kabbalistic heritage. Nevertheless his kabbalistic tradition continued
both in Italy and elsewhere, and it is possible that the last of the ecstatic Kabbalists
in Sicily was none other than Flavius Mithridates.
In contrast, the other major Kabbalist in Italy, R. Menahem Recanati, had, to my
best knowledge, no students, but several ofhis descendants were Kabbalists. In his
case, which is unparalleled in the history of Kabbalah, we may speak, on the basis
of more than one document, about the longest line of Kabbalists in the same family,
extending from the early fourteenth to at least the mid-sixteenth century. 2 ' A strong
sense of continuity permeates this family list, composed by R. Jacob Israel Finzi in
the mid-sixteenth century. Although R. Menahem's son Benjamin is not referred to
as a Kabbalist, Benjamin's son, R. Yehudah Makaby Finzi, is described as "the great
rabbi," "the great sage," "the great Kabbalist," "the holy man," who died "a won-
drous death by the kiss." 24 He also mentions the great-grandson of this Yehudah,
Yehudah Eleazar Makaby Finzi. 25 To this family belongs also R. Yitzhaq Eliahu, the
author of a manuscript commentary on Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut, who is described
by R. Jacob Israel as the uncle ofhis grandfather or, according to another piece of
information, as the grandfather ofhis grandfather. 20 His commentary, dated 1462,
is found in a Parma manuscript in the handwriting of the author. 27 Although a
certain Yitzhaq is mentioned in R. Jacob Israel's family pedigree, it seems that he is
a different person.
The interest in Recanati's Kabbalah in Italy is evident from testimony found in
R. Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano, a late-fifteenth-century Kabbalist, who mentions
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Concluding Remarks
a certain R Melli or 'Immanuel da Toscanella, who criticized some aspects of
Recanati's theosophy sometime around 1450. Genazzano was acquainted with
those criticisms, although he did not accept most of them; in fact much of his
book is dedicated to refuting the critique of Recanati's views. 28 His admiration for
Recanati is also evident elsewhere in 'Iggeret Hamudot. Alemanno was quite respect-
ful toward Recanati's thought, whom he introduces once as "the wise and under-
standing, the honorable Rabbi, our master Menahem Recanati." 29 These two
examples demonstrate that in both Jewish and Christian kabbalistic sources in
Italy, Recanati played an important role in the way in which Kabbalah was
understood. His influence is surely related to the fact that his Commentary on the
Torah was printed before most of the other important kabbalistic books. Even
today R. Menahem's works account for the greatest number of kabbalistic
treatises preserved in Italian manuscripts.
4. Between Spanish and Italian Kabbalah
Both Abulafia and Recanati are strikingly absent from the rich Spanish kabbalistic
literature produced before the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian peninsula.
There is a deep discrepancy between the forms of Kabbalah produced in its two
major centers. Perhaps most noteworthy is the much more synthetic nature of
Italian Kabbalah, discernible not only in Abulafia, Recanati, and Alemanno
but also in Reuven Tzarfati and, to a lesser extent, in R. Yitzhaq Elijah of Recanati
and R. Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano. The complexity undoubtedly reflects, at
least in part, the arrival of uprooted traditions in new intellectual environments,
facilitating new forms of encounters and organizations of knowledge. However,
important segments of Spanish Kabbalah were either unknown or rejected or
marginalized in those syntheses. For example, the elaborate theories on the
structure of the realm of evil, found in Castile in the second third of the thirteenth
century, which had an impact on the Zohar, played quite a negligible role in Italian
Kabbalah. Gershom Scholem called the group that articulated these theories the
circle of the ha-Kohen brothers, consisting of R. Jacob and R. Yitzhaq ha-Kohen,
and including also R. Moshe ben Shimeon of Burgos (Cinfa), their disciple, and
R. Todros ha-Levi Abulafia, the latter's student. 30 Abraham Abulafia, who visited
Castile when this sort of Kabbalah was already at its peak, and who was acquainted
with their major disciple, R. Moshe of Burgos, did not even find it necessary to
reject their views, which would not have made any sense in his Kabbalah. Menahem
Recanati was either unaware of or indifferent to their views. 31 Some acquaintance
with a formulation that may have stemmed from this circle is found in Reuven
Tzarfati, but it plays only a marginal role in his approach. 32 Nor are the views of
this circle prominent in Genazzano or in Alemanno.
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Concluding Remarks
On the other hand, those elements played an important role in the vast litera-
ture written in Castile in Alemanno's lifetime, known as related to Sefer ha-Meshiu. 33
The stark demonization of Christianity that is found in several Spanish sources
starting with the Zohar, and increasing in the period of the expulsion, is dramati-
cally less important in Italian Kabbalah. 34
Most of the Italian Kabbalists, much more so than all the Spanish ones — with
the important exception of the young R. Joseph Gikatilla — were interested in and
emphasized the special nature of the Hebrew language. This focus is quite evident
in Abulafia and all his followers, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, includ-
ing Alemanno, and to a certain extent also in Christian Kabbalah. All of these
Italian thinkers were attracted by the concept of a perfect language, an issue that
remained marginal in the conceptual economy of Spanish Kabbalah. This is the
background of the possible impact of certain formulations, found in Abulafia and
in R. Nathan Harar's Sha'arei Tzedeq, on Dante Alighieri's theory of language. 35 The
several commentaries on the Hebrew alphabet found in Spain differ in their con-
tent from the Italian treatment of language as a natural perfection. The Spaniards
regarded the letters as basically reflecting the inner structure of the divine realm, 36
while the Italians, especially Abulafia, Tzarfati, and Alemanno, were far more
interested in manipulating language by the well-known combinations of letters in
order to induce an ecstatic experience. And of course the explicit emphasis on the
importance of the ecstatic experience was certainly more evident in Italian than in
Spanish Kabbalah.
In matters of theosophy there was also an important discrepancy between the
dominant stands in Spain and Italy. The two main understandings of the nature of
the sefirot, as essence and as instruments of God, were found already in the
first part of the thirteenth century in Spain. The essentialist approach was more
mythical; it assumed that kabbalistic knowledge and praxis had to do with the
inner life of the divinity. This approach was dominant in Nahmanides and his
school and in most of the Zohar, as well as in a variety of other Kabbalists. 37 The
instrumental approach, which had a more philosophical orientation, was repre-
sented by the followers of R. Yitzhaq the Blind, especially R. Asher ben David and
R. Azriel of Gerona, and was incorporated in the later layers of the Zohar, Tiqqunei
Zohar and Ra'aya' Meheimna'. 38 In the general economy of theosophy in Spain, the
essentialist view was preponderant, as a Spanish Kabbalist, R. Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim,
attested around 1491. 39 In Italy, Recanati adopted the instrumental understanding of
the sefirot and imposed it upon Spanish texts that espoused the essentialist
approach. Alemanno also adopted this view. 40 Interestingly, Recanati's theological
stand was embraced by a Spanish Kabbalist active in Mantua, R. Yehudah Hayyat,
one of the first Kabbalists to quote extensively from the later layer of the Zohar, which
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Concluding Remarks
promoted an instrumentalist theosophy. There is a certain correlation between the
essentialist view and esotericism and between the instrumentalist approach and
exotericism. 41 As we saw in chapter 7, in the first kabbalistic manuscripts copied in
the 1280s in Rome the instrumentalist theory is quite prominent, as represented by
R. Asher ben David, R Ezra, and R. Azriel of Gerona. This theosophy was mediated
by a short anonymous treatise that I have identified as written by R. Yitzhaq of Acre,
which is an interpretation of a passage of R. Azriel, and which was integrated by
Recanati into one of his books. 42 Thus the instrumentalist view that was marginal-
ized in Spain in the second part of the thirteenth century was adopted in Italy, a
situation reminiscent also of the fate of the writings of R. Yitzhaq ibn Latif.
Finally, the early-fourteenth-century classic of Kabbalah, Sefer Ma'arekhet
ha-'EIohut, which had a negligible influence on Spanish Kabbalah, received more
attention in Italy, where it was the subject of commentaries by R. Yitzhaq Elijah,
the descendant of Recanati, and R. Reuven Tzarfati.
In Spain groups of Kabbalists are known to have existed and in some cases to
have worked together. Such was the case of the disciples of R. Yitzhaq the Blind in
Gerona and the students of Nahmanides in Barcelona. 43 Scholars assume the exis-
tence of groups in Castile in the context of the composition of the Zohar; 44 and
around 1470 there was testimony about a group of Kabbalists around R. Joseph
della Reina. 45 In Italy, most of the Kabbalists were solitary people. Recanati,
Tzarfati, and Alemanno are not known to have had Jewish disciples, much less to
have headed a specific group of Kabbalists. In the case of Alemanno, we know
much more about his relation to Giovanni Pico than to any Jewish Kabbalist.
As a result of these contrasting situations, in Spain relatively cohesive groups of
Kabbalists, who had much less contact with Christian material, produced more
homogeneous writings, whereas in Italy there was little or no cohesion into Jewish
groups, and the affinities between Jews and Christians were greater.
Last but not least: what seems also significant is, at least at the beginning, the
reticence of the Italian Kabbalists toward the mythical theosophy and dynamic
theurgy as represented in a classical manner by the Zohar and as presented by its
Spanish disseminators. 46 Some of the Italian Kabbalists, as we have seen, leaned
toward a much more magical interpretation of this lore. In a period when ancient
and pagan mythologies were attracting great interest in some Christian circles in
Italy, among both thinkers and artists, Jewish Italian Kabbalists preferred a more
philosophical understanding of Kabbalah, which attenuated the mythical facets of
their sources. This discrepancy is, however, superficial. In the Christian circles as
well, the ancient myths were not accepted literally, but were interpreted by means
of a hermeneutical framework that was basically allegorical. 47 In Jean Seznec's
astute formulation, "Mythology still plays a considerable role (even more so than
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Concluding Remarks
in the past) but it is fatally submerged in allegory." 48 In both cases, Renaissance
thinkers appropriated ancient material in a manner that accorded with their intel-
lectual orientations, and the mythical elements were often reduced to ahistorical
speculative truths. Both the Spanish mythical Kabbalah and the ancient Greek
myths informed Italian thought in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries,
but only after being adapted to the mindsets of their transmitters. This trend con-
tinued into the sixteenth century with the adaptation of the Safedian Kabbalah.
However, throughout this period the importance of magic as basically an extro-
verted type of religiosity attenuated the introverted tendency of philosophical
allegoresis that had been so obvious in medieval Jewish thought in general, includ-
ing Kabbalah.
Both of these contrasting attitudes toward Kabbalah are forms of cosmopoicsis, 49
of different constructions of imaginaires, which adopt, adapt, innovate, and orga-
nize themes and create more comprehensive conceptual structures and forms of
order as a way of trying to make sense of life in the universe in general and, in a
more specific way, to offer rationales for the religious beliefs and practices that
shape a certain community.
The Spanish Kabbalists who arrived in Italy after the expulsion had to cope with
cultural challenges that were new, unexpected, and from their point of view some-
times very disturbing. 50 In seeking to make their tradition clear in this new envi-
ronment, many openly dismissed or rejected cultural tendencies that deviated
from their spiritual patrimony. These cultural encounters energized Jewish cul-
ture, especially Kabbalah, in all the late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century
Jewish centers, and contributed to its creativity. Therefore, unlike the renowned
historian of Italian Jewry Cecil Roth, who sees in the early fifteenth century the
beginning of a weakening of creativity among Jews in Italy, 51 1 assume that such a
weakening took place much later, in the second part of the sixteenth century.
5. A New Intellectual Mobility
The forced mobility imposed by the brutal and unexpected expulsions from Spain
and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century created conditions for the dissemi-
nation of kabbalistic knowledge outside the Iberian peninsula, and thus for intel-
lectual as well as physical mobility. One result was a series of vigorous cultural
exchanges between Jews and Christians. This is most evident in the formation of
the Christian Kabbalah, a project in which many Jews and converts participated.
The new openness in some Christian circles in Italy to Jewish material, and nota-
bly to Kabbalah, is evident from the biographical details of individuals such as
Elijah del Medigo, Yohanan Alemanno and his son Yitzhaq, Abraham Farissol,
and, sometime later, Abraham de Balmes, Elijah Menahem Halfan, Elijah Bahur
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Concluding Remarks
Levita, and Shlomo Molkho. Contacts between exponents of Jewish and Christian
thought required a willingness to participate in a variety of encounters, including
the mentoring of Christian intellectuals in matters of Hebrew and Kabbalah and
participation in religious debates. The influence of Christian Scholasticism on
Jewish thinkers in this period is demonstrable in the writings of the Spanish
thinker R. Joseph Taitachek 52 and of R. David Messer Leon," among others. The
significant influence of various Christian trends of thought is also discernible in
both Isaac and Yehudah Abravanel's writings, where they were combined with
Jewish views. 54 It seems to me that the encounter with Christian thought on a
much larger scale than in the Middle Ages is emblematic of the new situation:
apparently only in early-sixteenth-century Italy could a Jew write an intellectual
bestseller like Dialoghi d'Amore for Christian readers. This openness was also
reflected in the much more exploratory and philosophically oriented nature of
Italian Kabbalah as compared to the Spanish version, which was much more
antagonistic to universalist stands. 55 The Renaissance as a cultural phenomenon
that introduced, inter alia, a significant study of Kabbalah among Christians
invited some Italian Jews — whose more open attitude to Christianity was part
of their communal tradition — to a greater receptiveness to Christian modes of
thought. In this context we should point out the emergence of printing as a factor
in the development of Kabbalah; the economic advantages arising from the esteem
that Kabbalah enjoyed in many intellectual circles persuaded both Jewish and
Christian printers to publish kabbalistic books, so that around 1560 someone
could have amassed a library that included the classics of this lore. After the 1560s,
the printing of kabbalistic books in both Hebrew and Latin accelerated, a factor
that became formative in the wider development and propagation of Kabbalah.
The Spanish Kabbalists who arrived in Italy and criticized the version of
Kabbalah that they encountered there did not address the phenomenon of Christian
Kabbalah, even though some Spanish converts such as Abner of Burgos, Pedro de
la Caballeria, and Paulus de Heredia had already produced Christological interpre-
tations of kabbalistic topics. 56 Heredia in particular, who was active at the end of
his life in Italy, was well acquainted with kabbalistic texts and probably also forged
some passages or short treatises. 57 R. Abraham Farissol, a reliable source on intel-
lectual life in Renaissance Italy, was acquainted with other kabbalistic forgeries
produced by converts in Spain perhaps at the end of the fifteenth century. 58 As
we have seen, Flavius Mithridates, a Jewish native of Sicily who converted to
Christianity, translated in Florence a huge array of Jewish kabbalistic writings,
including works by Abulafia, Recanati, and Tzarfati, as well as other speculative
medieval Jewish material. Some of these converts were of Ashkenazi extraction.
Other figures, like Alemanno, remained practicing Jews. This was indeed a unique
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Concluding Remarks
phenomenon; the particularist conception of Kabbalah that was dominant in Spain
encountered a much more cosmopolitan one in Italy. 59 Nevertheless, this phenom-
enon, which was deeply related to the philosophical understanding of Kabbalah,
receives no mention in the critiques by Spanish Kabbalists living in Italy.
R. Elijah Menahem Halfan, a learned rabbi and Kabbalist in Venice in the first
part of the sixteenth century, 60 and probably a student of the Spanish Kabbalist R.
Joseph ibn Shraga, described what happened in his generation: "Especially after
the rise of the sect of Luther, 61 many of the nobles and scholars of the land [namely
the Christians] sought to have a thorough knowledge of this glorious science
[namely Kabbalah]. They have exhausted themselves in this search, because
among our people there are but a small number of men expert in this wisdom, for
after the great number of troubles and expulsions, 62 only a few remain. So seven
learned men [namely Christians] grasp a Jewish man by the hem of his garment
and say: 'Be our master in this science.' " 63 This Italian Jew seems to react here in a
moderately positive way to the possible consequences of this dissemination of
Kabbalah, although in another text he is much less receptive to this development. 64
Since it is obvious that other Jews, including Kabbalists, reacted negatively to
the spread of Kabbalah among Christians, the question is why there was silence
on this trend among three Sephardic Kabbalists, namely Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim,
Yehudah Hayyat, and Joseph ibn Shraga, who lived for a while in Italy and openly
criticized the Jewish Kabbalah espoused there. I assume that the refugee status of
Hayyat and Ibn Shraga, and their perception of the potential danger involved in a
critique of Christian thinkers, deterred them.
6. Frances A. Yates on the Emergence of Christian Kabbalah
Few scholars of the Italian Renaissance have offered a more comprehensive and
penetrating assessment of the role played by Kabbalah in the predominant Christian
culture than Dame Frances A. Yates. I have pointed out earlier the historical prob-
lems involved in Yates's treatment of Kabbalah, as if the lore propagated by the
Spanish Kabbalists who arrived in Italy after the expulsion had a significant influ-
ence there. A more substantial question concerns the possible contribution of the
introduction of Kabbalah within some circles in Europe. Unfortunately, Yates does
not clearly address what precisely Kabbalah contributed to so many important areas
of culture that was not found earlier in the Middle Ages or in the corpus of pagan
writings translated by Ficino. Instead she claimed: "Fundamentally, the Greeks . . .
regarded operations as base and mechanical, a degeneration from the only occupa-
tion worthy of the dignity of man, pure rational and philosophical speculation. The
Middle Ages carried on this attitude in the form that theology is the crown of philo-
sophy and the true end of man is contemplation." 65 According to Yates, the change
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Concluding Remarks
toward a much greater activism was related to "the religious excitement caused by
the rediscovery of the Hermetica, and their attendant Magia; in the overwhelming
emotions, aroused by cabala and its magico-religious techniques. It is magic as an
aid to gnosis which begins to turn the will in the new direction. . . . Thus 'Hermes
Trismegistus' and the Neoplatonism and Cabalism associated with him, may have
played during his [Bruno's] period of glorious ascendance over the mind of the
western man a strangely important role in the shaping of human destiny." 66
The emergence of a new, and quite positive, mode of relating to activity, which
Yates attributes to the new emphasis on Hermetic and Neoplatonic magic and
Kabbalah, is the main factor in her understanding of the transformation of the
intellectual scene in Europe. This is a very important statement, which, if true,
opens the door to a new understanding of the West. To a certain extent, it is paral-
lel to Max Weber's much-better-known assumption that Protestantism was
successful because of the emphasis it laid on work. However, Yates deals with
Catholicism and with intellectual circles. In the epilogue to her last book she
claimed that "in its profoundly religious approach, Christian Cabala almost
repeats the original situation from which Christianity derived. The early Christians
appropriated a Christianised form of the Jewish religion. Similarly, the Christian
Cabalists of the Renaissance appropriated Jewish mysticism or Cabala and used it
for their own religious ends." 67 Here Yates claims to see Kabbalah as repeating the
formative moment of the acceptance of a certain form of Judaism by ancient
gentiles, but now by a Christian audience.
Before undertaking a more detailed analysis of Yates's proposal, let me dwell
for a moment on the change that Kabbalah underwent when accepted by
Renaissance Christian thinkers. As we saw in chapter 19, in Christian Kabbalah
there was a separation between kabbalistic theosophy and Jewish rituals, as a
result of which a form of Christian Gnosis emerged. Let us compare this complex
change to a hypothetical development that could have taken place a millennium
and a half before the emergence of Christian Kabbalah. My use of the term
"Gnosis" in relation to Christian Kabbalah is no accident; the remarkable affinity
between the ancient historical Gnosis and Christian Kabbalah seems very real.
In Gnosticism we witness a certain type of thought that is mostly speculative; it
does not consider the importance of human activity in the world; it is basically an
escapist religiosity insofar as the structure of this world is concerned.
Let me attempt to highlight briefly from another point of view some of the
points addressed above. Yates, like D. P. Walker, proposed visions of the
Renaissance that were deeply indebted to the general orientation of the so-called
Warburg school, which emphasized a less "enlightened" approach to religion,
one that was more sympathetic to concepts of myth, symbol, astrology, and magic.
•305-
Concluding Remarks
I fully agree with this approach. However, it seems that an understanding of
Giovanni Pico as tolerant and liberal, the emblem of the Renaissance, informed
their approach in an exaggerated way. The view of Giovanni Pico as the instigator
of another intellectual tradition totally new, as a thinker who first merged mysti-
cism and magic and created an alternative cultural quasi-pagan trend, seems to
me unwarranted. Pico himself conceived his activity as consonant with Christianity,
was ready to defend the orthodoxy of his theses in Rome, ultimately received the
pontifical blessing, and perhaps ended as a monk under the wings of the less-
than-tolerant Fra Girolamo Savonarola. These facts should detract nothing sub-
stantial from what he wrote before his alleged retreat to a monastery. However, I
believe that we may detect in his writings sufficient statements indicating a critical
attitude toward Kabbalah, an intolerance toward Jews, and in some instances a
hostility toward magic. Indeed, he achieved a synthesis between magic and
Kabbalah not because he strongly believed that either constituted an intellectual
alternative to Catholicism, but precisely because he was certain that his intellec-
tual enterprise strengthened his religious faith. Inadvertently, his amalgam
developed into a new trend because of the less orthodox inclinations of some
sixteenth-century thinkers such as Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim and, in a
different manner, Johann Reuchlin, who were less concerned with the consonance
of this amalgam with Catholicism. 68 If this observation is correct, we may ask what
the relation is between the progenitor and the progeny, in this case between
Giovanni Pico's Hermetic-kabbalistic synthesis and the history of this synthesis.
Yates assumed that Cornelius Agrippa only "standardized" Pico's position, and
that the reverberation of his thought is to be understood in terms of its further
development; but the difference is a matter of amplitude, not of a change in the
original and more conservative intention of the Italian prodigy. However, we must
also ask whether this "tradition" retained the conservative role it had in Pico's
thought after passing beyond the borders of Italy. It seems to me that the more
complex and elaborated discussions of Cornelius Agrippa went beyond Pico's
initial intentions not only in their quantity, but also in their audacity, helping to
foster a Hermetic tradition combined with kabbalistic elements that was more
independent of the authority of the church. In other words, in western and central
Europe, Pico's syncretistic enterprise was taken some distance beyond his inten-
tion. This more extreme version influenced some circles in both Italy and Germany.
In the vein of Yates's proposal to delineate the vicissitudes of the amalgam of
Hermeticism and Kabbalah in the parts of Europe she was concerned with, let me
explore a possible parallel in the Near East and eastern Europe, however unexpected
some may find it: the inclusion of eighteenth-century Polish Hasidism in the
European history of Hermeticism. 69 While focusing upon the corpus of Ficino's
•306-
Concluding Remarks
translations, both Walker and Yates paid less attention to other possible channels
for the transmission of Hermetic concepts to the West. More recent studies have
reduced the importance of Hermetic magic 70 and emphasized alternative chan-
nels. 71 Although Yates correctly described Hermeticism as somewhat declining in
Christian western Europe beginning in the late sixteenth century, 72 it was in the
Middle East, namely in Jerusalem 73 and in the Galilean city of Safed, in the mid-
sixteenth century, 74 and in eastern Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, 75 that
Jewish mysticism was heavily influenced by some more moderate talismanic-
magical traditions that flourished in an unprecedented manner. Later research,
especially the two important books of R. J. W. Evans, has opened the way for a much
better understanding of the repercussions of the Italian versions of the occult,
including Kabbalah and Hermeticism, among the upper classes of central Europe,
especially in Prague and Vienna, from the late sixteenth century until the beginning
of the eighteenth century. 76 Largely adopting Yates's overall picture of "occult phi-
losophy," Evans examined its influence in regions that received less attention from
his eminent predecessor. I do not assume that the Christian Habsburgan fascina-
tion with astrology, alchemy, Hermeticism, and Kabbalah influenced the Hasidic
mystical-magical model, which had its own sources in Safedian and some earlier
forms of Kabbalah. 77 In the immediate vicinity of the areas where Hasidism emerged
and flourished, magic and a variety of occult preoccupations informed the world-
view and the preoccupations — with alchemy, for example — of the Christian elite in
the period immediately preceding the activity of the founder of Hasidism, R. Israel
ben Eliezer Ba'al Shem Tov, known as the Besht. He, too, was in some ways a talis-
manic prophet, in a manner reminiscent of Ficino and Giovanni Pico, although his
sources were mid-sixteenth-century Safedian discussions. 78
7. Italian Kabbalah and Modern Research on Kabbalah
Having considered the impact of Kabbalah on Florentine Jewish and Christian
intellectuals at the end of the fifteenth century, let me turn to scholarship on this
topic in the past two generations. The rich cultural ambiance in which Christian
Kabbalah emerged was closely tied to the rediscovery and translation of literary cor-
pora that had previously been unknown or poorly known even to the most learned
elites in central and western Europe. Translations of substantial corpora from
Greek and Hebrew into Latin opened up the possibility of comparing them and of
suggesting historical and phenomenological affinities between them. Translations
from Hebrew were made from material available in Italy, which means mainly
Italian Jewish Kabbalah. The synthetic and comparative mode that characterized
many forms of Italian Kabbalah, especially the Christian one, created conditions for
a more reflective and even historical approach to the history of Kabbalah. As we
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Concluding Remarks
have seen, Elijah del Medigo anticipated some of the findings of modern scholars
on the affinity between Kabbalah and Neoplatonism and even the dates when
Kabbalah and the Zohar were written. 79 In doing so, he followed the path of human-
ists in Italy, who had started their critical historical and philological activity some
few decades earlier. Similarly, Reuchlin's remarks about the affinity between the
views of R Azriel and Neoplatonism triggered concurrence from Scholem. 80
By and large, the mode prevailing in Florence was shaped by the widespread
belief in some circles in a prisca theolcujia, the theory discussed in the Introduction
and in chapter 13, which centered on the assumption that different cultures had
expressed the same religious truths. Renaissance thinkers sought to discover the
corresponding terminologies that reflected those truths in the different literary
corpora, and to rescue these hidden messages from their specific expressions in
individual works. Through the work of Giovanni Pico in particular, the allegedly
ancient Kabbalah was transformed into an adumbration of Christianity. The spec-
ulations of Christian Kabbalists such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Johann
Reuchlin, and Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim represent the first comparative
efforts to understand Kabbalah. These Renaissance figures, especially Johann
Reuchlin, were the first strong phenomenologists of Kabbalah and influenced the
development of twentieth-century understandings of this mystical lore.
So, for example, in his classic Major Trends in Jeurish Mysticism Gershom Scholem
formulated his influential vision of the role of symbolism in a laconic manner:
"the mystic refrains from destroying the living texture of religious narrative. . . .
His essential mode of thinking is what I should like to call symbolical in the strict-
est sense." 81 The term "essential" is in fact much more essential for understanding
Scholem's stand than for understanding mysticism or kabbalistic literature.
Elsewhere, in a later and longer formulation, he wrote: "One could say that all of
creation is only a language, a symbolic expression of that level which cannot be
apprehended by thought. . . . The entire world is thus a symbolic body, within
whose concrete reality there is reflected a divine secret. . . . If the entire world is
one great symbol and it is entirely filled with symbols in each and every detail, how
much more so the Torah." 82
The apophatic tone of this passage, assuming some kind of a negative theol-
ogy, is quite important. Thought is conceived of as very important but limited, and
the introduction of the concept of symbolism is an attempt to solve this quandary.
Scholem's statements about a symbolic essence of mysticism in general, which
I propose to call "pansymbolism," stem, in my opinion, from a passage in
Reuchlin's De Arte Cabalistica already quoted in the Introduction. 83 Elsewhere
Reuchlin uses phrases such as "a symbolic philosophy of the art of Kabbalah" and
"symbolic theology." 84 These usages were, in my opinion, crucial to Scholem's
•308-
Concluding Remarks
own understanding of Kabbalah. In itself, Reuchlin's view is a simplification of
the much broader spectrum of kabbalistic phenomena, which consist of a diver-
sity of mythological, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, and magical elements, and which
are by no means reducible to symbolic Pythagoreanism. However, his reduction of
the content of Kabbalah in its entirety to a form of thought consonant with, and
even an ancient source of, Pythagoreanism can be easily understood as part of his
intention to produce a book whose contribution was different from that of either
Marsilio Ficino or Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples. 85 This view of Kabbalah as a kind of
philosophy possessing a predominantly symbolic mode of expression finds
echoes in modern interpretations of myth and Kabbalah as a type of "narrative
philosophy," according to Friedrich Schelling and Scholem. 86 However, unlike
Reuchlin and other Renaissance figures who combined their leanings toward
symbolism with a belief in the reality of magic and its role in Kabbalah, modern
scholars of Kabbalah have dramatically weakened this nexus. 87
Even so, in my opinion the Renaissance philosophical understandings of
Kabbalah, as represented in both Jewish and Christian thinkers, continue to rever-
berate in modern scholarship. 88 1 am confident that this factor is a major clue to
understanding the genesis of Scholem's pansymbolic approach. Indeed, he once
remarked that if he believed in metempsychosis, he would perhaps see Reuchlin's
soul as having transmigrated into himself. 89 This may well have been merely a
metaphorical statement, but it may nevertheless also disclose something more
profound about Scholem's self-perception as a scholar. It may disclose his under-
standing not only that the line of research in modern Jewish studies starts with
Reuchlin as a founding father, "der erster Erforscher des Judentums," 90 as the
first of the systematic exponents of Kabbalah, but also that modern scholars of
Kabbalah still follow his conceptual vision. This influence is conspicuous in the
overemphasis by Scholem and his followers on the paramount importance of
symbolic language and thought as representative of and essential to the entire
kabbalistic literature. 91
I have emphasized the importance of Reuchlin's vision of the symbola in
Kabbalah in order to point to a view of this lore that has been in existence indepen-
dently of many of the other sources that scholars have attributed to Scholem's view
of symbolism, which include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Georg Friedrich
Creuzer, Stephane Mallarme, and Walter Benjamin. 92 Scholem was certainly well
acquainted with their views, and they may indeed have influenced his thought.
However, we should ask the basic question whether it is more plausible that he
adopted an already existing and influential vision of Kabbalah as symbolic, found
in a book whose author Scholem himself described as the founder of the science
of Judaism, or that Scholem accepted a vision concerning the very nature of
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Concluding Remarks
Kabbalah from persons, however famous, whose acquaintance with this lore
was at best marginal. Moreover, at least once, shortly before his death, Scholem
explicitly described Reuchlin's view of Kabbalah as receptio symbolica. 93
I propose a multilateral answer: Scholem adopted Reuchlin's vision of the
nature of Kabbalah as quintessentially symbolic, but formulated his vision of
symbolism under the influence of Goethe and Benjamin. Or, to formulate this com-
plexity in a different way: the interest in the nature of symbolism in his immediate
entourage, namely the acquaintance with Walter Benjamin, or, in a broader con-
text, including Ernst Cassirer's early essays on symbolism, fostered a much greater
openness toward Reuchlin and toward the influential nineteenth-century Christian
author Franz Molitor, who was admired by Scholem and who viewed Kabbalah as
fundamentally a symbolic lore. Whatever the nexus between the two main sources
of Scholem's understanding symbolism may be, it is clear that he was influenced by
views first formulated by German authors — Reuchlin, Goethe, and Molitor — and
adopted their vision of Kabbalah as a symbolic mode of expression.
Reuchlin, as we have seen earlier, described himself as Pythagoras rediuiuus;
Scholem described himself as Reuchlin rediuiuus. It is hard to believe that Scholem
was not aware of Reuchlin's self-description. Reuchlin launched a new tradition,
one emphasizing a symbolic reading of Kabbalah, indeed a receptio symbolica,
which today represents not the specific conceptualization of Kabbalah by Jewish
Kabbalists, but an academic tradition that emphasizes the importance of
symbols. 94 To a certain extent Scholem was right: insofar as one of the major per-
ceptions of Kabbalah by scholars is involved, namely as a prominently symbolic
theology, Reuchlin was indeed the founding figure. Thus, a seminal statement
dealing with the phenomenology of Kabbalah, as found in the Christian Kabbalah
of Reuchlin, had a lasting impact on modern romantic scholarship on Kabbalah,
which construed it as a unified form of literature, with symbolism constituting its
unquestioned center. 95 When Giovanni Pico encouraged Reuchlin in 1490 in
Florence to study Kabbalah, he probably did not know that he was assisting in
establishing a new field in Christian theology; he certainly could not have known
that he was a catalyst in creating the conceptual structure that would inform the
academic study of Kabbalah centuries later.
One modern scholar, the Italian Jewish historian Arnaldo Momigliano, took
issue with Scholem's general approach, claiming that Scholem was reflecting a form
of "Catholic romanticism." 96 Although he did not elaborate upon the meaning of
this observation, I assume that he was referring to Scholem's reliance on and admi-
ration for Franz Molitor. Molitor was also influenced by Reuchlin's vision of sym-
bolic theology. 97 Momigliano chose another figure as his imaginary predecessor, an
Italian rabbi named 'Ahima'atz ben Paltiel, the author of the eleventh-century
•310-
Concluding Remarks
Majillat 'Ahima'atz, or Scroll of 'Ahima'atz. 98 As a scholar Momigliano was more a
humanist reminiscent of Lorenzo Valla than a Renaissance figure, whereas Scholem
operated more as a Renaissance figure identifying himself with Johann Reuchlin
than as a humanist. Indeed, in one of the few confessions about his purpose in
studying Kabbalah, Scholem described his use of critical tools such as history and
philology as means of attaining understanding of what he called "the mountain,"
which in that context was a symbol of reality or of the absolute." Jewish esotericism
traveled a long way from the Byzantine Apulia's R. 'Ahima'atz, with his focus on his-
tory, mythical though it might be, 100 and his belief that his ancestors could contem-
plate the Merkauah and perform miracles, to the Pythagorean-Neoplatonic approach
of Kabbalah that emerged in Tuscany in the late fifteenth century and was embraced
by Reuchlin in some of his formulations. 'Ahima'atz and Reuchlin, like many other
thinkers between them, undoubtedly shared a widespread belief in the power of the
divine name, but they lived in different cultural and imaginary universes.
The advent of the translated writings of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and their many
followers in the Middle Ages, and even more so in the Renaissance, with their
emphasis on the importance of intellection and contemplation, produced new syn-
theses between the fragmented, concrete, and extrovert propensities and experi-
ences of late-antique Jewish mysticism and the new modes of thought. In fact they
forged new forms of Judaism, just as the magical traditions of Hellenistic extraction
did. The tensions between them never ceased during the history of Jewish mysti-
cism. The importance of the Hebrew language, with the beliefs in its powers, in the
crucial role of the commandments as a performative form of religious expression,
in the essentializing specificity of the studied text, remained as central to the medi-
eval Jewish mystics as ever and absorbed many of the contributions of the introvert,
spiritual, and intellectual elements stemming from the Greek and Hellenistic heri-
tage. Alemanno's use of the term tzejiyyah, which in the Heikhalot literature meant
gazing, but which he understood in the Platonic sense of contemplation, is just one
example of both the synthesis and the tension between the two religiosities.
Alemanno, however, situated magical performance higher than contemplating the
sefirot. 101 Such a stance is also found in Abraham Abulafia's book 'Or ha-Sekhel and,
following him, Moshe Narboni's Commentary on Avicenna's Intentions of the Philosophers,
where the claim is made that the prophet who can change the course of nature is the
highest among all the prophets. 102 The prophets, too, were imagined to have used
divine names. A belief in the importance of human action, basically linguistic, as
higher than even the mental supreme accomplishment is often related to kataphatic
propensities, namely to more positive types of theologies. Symbolism as defined by
scholars of Kabbalah, when it occurs, is much more an expression of a negative
theology, which may prevent a direct contact with the divine.
■3ii-
Concluding Remarks
Scholem adopted one aspect of Reuchlin's complex Renaissance structure, the
symbolic one, but marginalized the important "practical" aspects of his earlier
book De Verbo Mirifico for understanding the nature of Reuchlin's project, as he
attenuated magical aspects of Kabbalah in general. The marriage between
Kabbalah and magic in the Renaissance, as highlighted by Yates, and in my opin-
ion the same "marriage" in its precursors in both Spanish and Italian Kabbalah,
discussed in chapter 21, have been considerably weakened by modern scholars'
focus on the philosophical and symbolic aspects of Kabbalah. 103 For example, new
interpretations of the prisca theologia have attenuated the diversity of the foci visible
in the Renaissance understanding of Kabbalah, where both ecstasy and magic
were regarded as more central than symbolism. As seen in the passage from
Riccius quoted earlier in this chapter, symbols were used in order to produce an
elevation of the mind to the divine realm.
Some years ago Amos Funkenstein and I described Gershom Scholem's project
in terms of Renaissance approaches. 104 The vitality of the unifying visions of
Kabbalah did not wane after their promulgation by Christian Kabbalists. More
recently, such a vision formed the center of one of the most fascinating scholarly
understandings of Kabbalah as proposed by Elliot R. Wolfson. At the end of his
most recent book he writes about what he calls the "axiom" of Kabbalah: "Suffering
the suffering of this axiom is a first step to redeeming an ancient wisdom, tiredly
waiting to be liberated from the confinement of its own textual embodiment." 105
What is the content of this "axiom"? Wolfson lays it out in a passage just before:
"In the symbolic view of medieval Kabbalah, as in a variety of ancient Gnostic
sources, especially of Valentinian provenance, the cultic retrieval of sexual unity is
in fact a 'reconstructed masculinity.' " lo6 Apparently Wolfson identifies with the
suffering of this axiom; otherwise I cannot explain this statement. Although I
cannot undertake a discussion of the content of Wolfson's statements here, 107 the
fact that one unified message transpires from so many documents, medieval and
ancient, when understood symbolically, is a nice example of the revival of Giovanni
Pico's and Reuchlin's approach to Kabbalah as prisca theolcujia and receptio symbolica.
They, too, attempted to redeem Kabbalah from its textual confinement, and to
find in it a masculine divine figure at the center. Another potential proof of conti-
nuity resides in the fact that Giovanni Pico intended to write a poetical theology;
although he apparently never did so, Wolfson has. 108
Whereas the Zoharic and Safedian Kabbalah succeeded in establishing them-
selves at the center of traditional studies of Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Kabbalah,
forged by Giovanni Pico and Reuchlin, richly fertilized some approaches found in
modern scholarship on Kabbalah, as well as contemporary challenges in Italy
from the likes of the famous seventeenth-century anti-Kabbalist Leone da Modena.
•312-
Concluding Remarks
Perhaps the most important lesson that can be drawn from the discussions above
is that discerning differences among the three basic models of Kabbalah — the
theosophical-theurgical, the ecstatic, and the magical 109 — and understanding
the reasons for the emergence and development of those divergences, as well as
the manner in which they were dealt with by various individuals, is the beginning
of the joy of understanding, whether of Kabbalah or of any other widespread cul-
tural phenomenon. Following Ficino, and to a certain extent also loan P. Culianu,
we may see in the scholarship on Kabbalah an instance of iocare serio, a "serious
game," 110 in which discernment of the profound variety of phenomena under scru-
tiny is the main rule. Although I have surveyed several developments of Italian
Kabbalah, from my point of view there is no reason to prefer one of them, or any
version of models, as a phenomenological starting point for understanding
Kabbalah as a whole. From the phenomenological point of view the main lesson
one can learn from studying Italian Kabbalah is the predominance of diversity
even in a single geographical center.
The fact that I have concentrated above on the topic of Kabbalah does not mean
that I believe that this form of knowledge was the central preoccupation of either
Jews or Christians in Italy either in the Middle Ages or during the Renaissance.
Unlike Jacob Burckhardt, who defined the Renaissance in terms of the ascent of the
arts, 111 1 would like to avoid defining a long period of creativity in terms of one dom-
inant activity. Thus I would also reject the view that mysticism constituted a central
interest and activity, in the vein of Henry Thode's proposal, more than a century
ago, to explain the Renaissance as the culmination of the impact of St. Francis of
Assisi and the Franciscan order. 112 The different models of Kabbalah described
above should be understood as threads in a much more complex constellation of
intellectual processes that shaped both Jewish and Christian culture in Italy
between the late thirteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century.
•313-
APPENDIX i
The Angel Named Righteous:
From R. 'Amittai of Oria to Erfurt and Rome
In the Introduction and chapter 7 we traced the trajectory of the mythologems from
Apulia and Lucca first to the Rhineland early in the tenth century and then back to
Rome in the late thirteenth century. 1 Because the extant statements about the
export of esoterica from Italy are general and apocryphal, the details of transmis-
sion are impossible to substantiate. As a result, although scholars have accepted
the mediating role of Italy in the passage of esoterica from East to West, no one, to
my best knowledge, has attempted to show in any detail what was transmitted and
who accepted the views of specific material.
There is hard evidence that the ninth-century poems of R 'Amittai ben Shefatiah
arrived in Germany and were interpreted there. The poems of R. Moshe ben
Qalonymos, written in either Lucca or Mainz in the eleventh century, are still
•315-
Appendix i
available in southern Germany, though they are less influenced by esoteric
themes. 2 Let me present some verses from two of R. 'Amittai's poems and show
that a specific theme developed in an early-thirteenth-century Ashkenazi work
must have drawn upon earlier sources, most probably Italian:
Metatron, the mighty 3 angel, which turned into fire from flesh, 4
Teaches ethics [musar], 5 as he is appointed over the children of light ['or] 6
Yefeifiah, the angel of the Torah, collects black fire 7
In order to link a diadem ['atarah] 8 to the letters of the Torah 9
The foundation of His world is called by the name Tzaddiq; 10
By the utterance of his speech he shakes the world. 11
The last two lines are my chief concern here. In order to understand them I sug-
gest comparing their content with that of the earlier verses. The three doublets can
be seen as unrelated and can be read independently of each other, and so the righ-
teous, the Tzaddiq, may be understood as a human figure; but according to another
reading, which I prefer, the righteous is the name of just another angel. In fact I
assume that in this case as in others, Metatron and Yefeifiah are identical, or at
least quite similar, since both function as angels of the Torah. 12 In any case, the
Torah is mentioned implicitly and explicitly in the first two doublets. If there are
indeed affinities among the three angelic powers, we may see the three doublets as
treating the same entity, and thus Metatron, Yefeifiah, and Tzaddiq, or the
Righteous, are synonyms. This triple identity is not totally evident, but we may be
confident that the Righteous is not a human but an angelic power, since R. ' Amittai
writes in another poem:
An angel that is called Tzaddiq, upon whom the footstool [is found] , 13
Is appointed upon the countenance [qelaster] 14 together with other members
of the camp. 15
He is both awake 16 and answers — shortens the answer [of the angels]. 17
I assume that "the countenance" is to be understood as the face of God, and thus
the anonymous angel is appointed upon the face of God. If this assumption is cor-
rect, we have again the claim that an angel called Tzaddiq functions just as
Metatron does, as the angel of the countenance: Sar ha-Panim. We also have rab-
binic statements, especially the Babylonian Talmud's Hagigah, to the effect that
the Righteous is the foundation of the world. 18
However, between the two poems there is a clear discrepancy: in the first the
world is supported by an angel called Tzaddiq that constitutes its foundation; in
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The Angel Named Righteous
the second it is the footstool of the seat of glory that is supported by the angel
named Tzaddiq. This discrepancy is indeed an issue that should be addressed. I
could find only one example in which the two functions are fulfilled by the same
figure: Atlas is sometimes described as supporting the globe of the world, and in
other cases as supporting a footstool. 19 1 shall return to the Atlas theme later, but
the entire issue deserves a more detailed inquiry that I cannot undertake in this
framework. It should be noticed that 'Amittai's verses are compact texts, which
bring together themes found in different contexts. The density of the messages
reflects a rather articulated worldview, which is summarized in very few lines in
two disparate poems.
In the main Ashkenazi esoteric school related to the Qalonymos family, I did
not find a continuation of this line of thought. 20 However, according to a tradition
found in a thirteenth-century Ashkenazi passage, the term "pillar" in the Hagigah
text, which is understood as the Righteous, is identified as an angel that shakes
the world once every seventy years. 21 The identity of the angel is not clear. However,
in an Ashkenazi treatise by R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo of Erfurt, a nexus between
the pillar as the righteous and the angel Metatron seems quite plausible. 22 In his
Commentary on the Hajtarah, the Ashkenazi author glosses one of the names of
Metatron as follows: "ve-Tzaddiq — because a pillar seizes the world and its name
is Tzaddiq, and it seizes the world by the right hand, as it is said: 'And the righ-
teous is the foundation of the world' [Proverbs 10:25]. " 23 Here the pillar and the
hand are explicitly identified. A few lines before this passage, the identity of the
entity that seizes the world is revealed more explicitly: "ve-'Akhy'el in gematria
[amounts to] 'Ofan, and in gematria Yuppiy'el, and this is the name of the angel of
the countenance, and this is the meaning of the statement that there is an 'Ofan on
high, and the arm of Metatron is linked to the 'Ofan, and it seizes the world. And
the storm passes from the 'Ofan to the arm of the Holy one, blessed be He, as it is
said: 'and under the arms, the world [is found].' " 24
The significance attributed by Nehemiah ben Shlomo to the string of numerical
equivalences of these words is not totally clear. They may indicate the identity among
the three terms, which I find difficult in the hierarchy that is explicit in the passage;
I find it more plausible that they refer to the relationship among them. According to
the latter reading, the name of the angel of countenance is equivalent to the term
'Qfan because it is dependent on, or linked to, that angelic figure. Likewise, I would
read the first name, ve-'Akhy'el, as referring to God, in a manner reminiscent of
whatis written in precisely this context, "ve-'Ay'el amounts in gematria to ha-Gadol,
because God is great." 25 The remaining question to be resolved is the specific mean-
ing of the arm. According to this passage, the world is held by the arm, and the arm,
which is also a pillar, is linked to the 'Ofan. I am not sure that I can provide a visual
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Appendix i
representation of the relationship among the four factors mentioned above: God,
'Ofan, Metatron, and the world. Given the prominence of the verb TPS, "to seize," in
connection with an arm, I am inclined to relate this passage to a misunderstood
Heikhalot passage describing another angel, 'Anafiel, as holding the world in his
hand in a manner reminiscent of Apollo/Helios in some mosaics from the Hellenistic
period. 26 However, for our purposes, it will suffice to point out that Metatron, or
his right hand, is identified as the cosmic pillar. Elsewhere the Commentary on the
Hajtarah states that "the pillar of the world is called Tzaddiq, the foundation of the
world, [and] it is linked to the cherub, and 'Adaneyah is the pillar, as it is written:
'whereupon are its foundations ['adaneyah] fastened' [Job 38:5]. " 27
The plural form of 'Eden, "foundation stone" — 'adaneyah, "its foundation
stones" — has been understood as a proper name for the pillar. As in the earlier
sentence, this entity is linked to a supernal entity, a cherub, quite reminiscent of
the 'Ofan. We encounter here a specific hierarchy constituted by three beings:
God, an angelic figure ('Ofan or, alternatively, a cherub), and the lower cosmic
entity designated as Metatron, which is also the pillar and the righteous. Unlike
the rabbinic text, which does not create any specific link between the pillar and
God, a continuum and similarity between them is articulated. They are connected
by an angelic median figure, and both are described anthropomorphically. This
cosmic pillar Righteous is obviously connected to the world, and I assume that
Metatron is understood both as the angel appointed over the world and also as the
sustaining power of the world. However, this medieval text describes Metatron as
depending upon the arm of God, and thus emphasizes the strong linkage between
the angel and God. In a way, Metatron is a reverberation on a lower plane of a part
of the divine structure. In the same treatise, in the immediate vicinity of the discus-
sions of the pillar and the angels, Nehemiah ben Shlomo draws a parallel between
the divine form and the angelic world: since the angels are portrayed in some
places in rabbinic literature as standing, having no knees, and thus as inflexible,
the Ashkenazi writer describes them as being like "pillar[s] of iron." 28
Some interesting parallels to these passages, found in a manuscript closely
related to R Nehemiah, eliminate the cherub as an intermediary between God's
arm and Metatron. In this fragment Yuppi'el is identified with Metatron. 25 In his
Commentary on the Seuenty Names of Metatron, R. Nehemiah combines a view of
Metatron as the righteous with the view that this angel and God seize the world in
their hands. 30 Closer to the Commentary on the Hajtarah is a version found in a man-
uscript of the Commentary on the Seuenty Names of Metatron, where Yuppiy'el is
described as amounting in gematria to '"Ofan . . . since the entire world stands
upon a pillar named righteous . . . and Yuppiy'el is linked to the finger of the Holy
One, blessed be He." 31 My assumption is that this is a powerful parallel to the
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The Angel Named Righteous
Ashkenazi texts presented above, and we may assume that one of the groups of
Ashkenazi esoteric authors articulated a hierarchy based on three supernal entities
connected among themselves and related to the concept of the cosmic pillar.
Moreover, in a short sentence in the same treatise, the commentator compresses
a view that occurs in his writings several times: "Tahsasiyah ... in gematria 'a
righteous comes to me,' that is, 'the righteous is the foundation of the world'
[Proverbs 10:25], ll because he sustains the pillar that is called righteous and the
entire world suffers 33 with him." 34 Again in the Commentary on the Seuenty Names 0/
Metatron, we read: "'Ala'Kyah in gematria is Bore'o, 35 because he seizes [tqfes] the
entire world in his fist, and he hangs upon the Creator." 36 Shortly before this,
R. Nehemiah writes: "Metatron bears the world by his great power, 37 and he
depends upon the finger of God." 38 In these two last statements the angel has a
double nature: he depends upon God, and he seizes the world in his hand or fist.
This double function is reminiscent of the two descriptions of the angelic Tzaddiq
in R. 'Amittai's two poems. In R. Nehemiah's Commentary on the Hajtarah we have a
similar stance: "The pillar that sustains the world is called Tzaddiq, and he sustains
it by his right hand, as it is written: 'The righteous is the foundation of the world'
[Proverbs 10:25]. " 39
A subordination of the angel of the countenance to the cherub is found also in a
late-thirteenth-century Ashkenazi text printed by Gershom Scholem, which also
demonstrates an acquaintance with theosophical Kabbalah. 40 However, much more
important is the following anonymous text presumably related to theosophical
Kabbalah, again printed by Scholem: "I heard that about him it is hinted at [in the
verse] 'Righteous is the foundation of the world,' 'because for one righteous the
world stands,' 41 and it is Enoch ben Yared." 42 1 wonder whether the oral tradition
alluded to by the Kabbalist reflects a tradition passed orally from an Ashkenazi source.
The affinity between Metatron, related in some cases to Enoch, and the cosmic
pillar is reminiscent of the role played by Atlas in Greek mythology. Indeed
Eusebius of Caesarea reported a view in the name of Pseudo-Eupolemos, accord-
ing to which "the Greeks say that Atlas invented astrology, and that Atlas is the
same as Enoch." 43 This identification has no direct relationship to the role of Atlas
and Enoch as pillars, but they indicate an affinity between those figures, and the
possible influence of the Greek mythologem on the Jewish one deserves further
exploration.
Whether these themes explain better the early theosophic discussions of the
cosmic or phallic figure of the righteous in early Kabbalah is an important issue for
understanding the emergence of theosophical Kabbalah, but it should not concern
us here. 44 In any case, it is possible that a discussion found in Abraham Abulafia's
Sejer Sitrei Torah, written in Rome in 1280, and dealing with the eschatological role
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Appendix i
of the pillar — quite an exceptional topic in Abulafia's writings — may have some-
thing to do with the views of R Nehemiah ben Shlomo, adduced above. 45
Let me summarize: the tradition first documented in R. 'Amittai's poem is
found indeed in a special type of Ashkenazi literature, different from the main
school of Hasidei Ashkenaz, presumably in Erfurt. 46 At the end of the thirteenth
century, it made its way to Rome. Thus, Jews in Italy imported a more elaborated
form of raw material that was, presumably, exported three centuries earlier to
Ashkenaz. Interestingly, I did not find this mythologem in the writings of the main
school of Hasidei Ashkenaz associated with the Qalonymos family. To my best
knowledge, it is found only in the writings of R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, whose
views differ from the other and more influential school, or it occurs as a result of
his influence. This and some other conceptual distinctions between his writings
and those of the Qalonymos school 47 may imply that it was not the Lucca-Mainz
line of transmission that was instrumental in bringing this mythologem from Italy
to Ashkenaz, but another line, whose views were known to both R. Nehemiah and
R Abraham ben Azriel, the author of 'Arugat ha-Bosem, in which R 'Amittai's poem
is quoted. In this work R. Abraham also quoted briefly from R Nehemiah ben
Shlomo's interpretations of earlier poems. 48
We may assume that sometime in late antiquity or in the early Middle Ages,
Apuleian Jews imported the theory of Metatron as the righteous and the pillar of
the world, related to angelology reminiscent of the Heikhalot literature; the theory
does not survive in the European manuscripts preserving forms of this literature.
This mythologem was transmitted to Ashkenaz, and apparently also to theosoph-
ical Kabbalah, and returned to Italy in a manuscript now preserved in Rome,
Angelica 46, described in chapter 7. R 'Amittai's poems are therefore the earliest
evidence, though not, I assume, the origin of the mythologem, and they enhance
our understanding of a small piece of history in Jewish mysticism.
The mythologems elaborated above are based upon an implicit and an explicit
anthropomorphism. The archangel is appointed, according to a verse in R 'Amittai,
on the countenance of God, whereas R Nehemiah describes the connection of
Metatron with the divinity in quite an organic manner. Let me present another
verse by 'Amittai and compare it with Ashkenazi esoteric material. After a long
description of how God created Adam, the poet writes:
He appointed [pequdim bo] within him ten things from the face of the
Dynamis [Penei ha-Geuurah] : 4 °
The sight of the eye and the hearing of the concave ear,
The Countenance of the Face, 50 Understanding, and upright Knowledge,
Spirit, Soul, Intelligence, and Stature and Form. 5 '
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The Angel Named Righteous
The list of the ten things is not new: it echoes a rabbinic statement about ten
things given to the infant by its father and mother, and the other ten given by
God; 52 and this is undoubtedly 'Amittai's source. However, what is especially
interesting for our discussion here in the formulation of the Italian poet is the
formulation "the face of the Dynamis." This means that the ten things reflect qual-
ities of the divine face, a clear anthropomorphic statement. To be sure, terms like
Stature, Qomah, do not represent the divine or human face, but their body, as we
learn from the widespread phrase Shi'ur Qomah, meaning the dimension or size of
the body. In other words, R. 'Amittai speculates about the isomorphism of God
and man, as well as the similarity of the functions of their limbs. While the talmu-
dic statement enumerates ten things given by God, there is no implication that
God himself possesses those qualities or limbs. However, the way in which the
father gives a substance from himself, as do the mother and also the third partner,
God, can be understood not just as giving those ten things, but as giving them
from Himself. That R. 'Amittai was not necessarily an attentive reader of the
Talmud and presumably did not extrapolate his formulation through exegesis of
the talmudic passage in Niddah is evident from the fact that R. Eleazar of Worms
offers in one of his discussions the following recommendation: "You should think
in your heart that . . . the Holy One, blessed be He, gave me ten things of His own
[mishelo] , which are Soul, Countenance of the Face, and the hearing of the ear and
the sight of eye, and the smell of the nose, and the speech of the lips, and the usage
of the tongue, and the touch of the hands, and the walk of the feet, Wisdom, and
Understanding. ""
It is evident that R. Eleazar had a version similar to that of R. 'Amittai but neither
identical with it nor derived from it. Both assume that God gives something He has
in Himself, but they differ on the details. The most important difference seems to
me to be the appearance of the term Qomah in R. 'Amittai, and the absence of this
concept in R. Eleazar 54 or in any of the lists of ten things that I have seen. This
means, in my opinion, that in ninth-century Italy an older version of this list was
preserved, one closer to an anthropomorphic view and presumably close to the
literature connected to the Shi'ur Qomah speculations; and that the details of that list
had changed. On the background of these observations, let me briefly draw atten-
tion to the fact that one of the most anthropomorphic passages found in the Middle
Ages, and printed anonymously by E. E. Urbach, 55 stems, in my opinion, from one
of the lost writings of R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo of Erfurt, 56 whose views have been
analyzed above in the context of other verses of R. 'Amittai. As Urbach pointed out,
there was an episode in Ashkenaz in which books with anthropomorphic views
were destroyed. 57 In the other books of R. Nehemiah, interest in the Shi'ur Qomah is
also substantial. 58 That speculations about Metatron and Shi'ur Qomah went together
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Appendix i
and were an integral part of an anthropomorphic Jewish theology seems to me a
plausible assumption, as the archangel was called YHWH Qatan, "the small YHWH,"
or 'Adonai Qatan, in order to distinguish it from "the Great YHWH," or Adonai
Gadol. 50 There can be no doubt that the two major topics in the various books of
R Nehemiah ben Shlomo are commentaries on Shi'ur Qomah regarding the seventy
names of Metatron and the seventy names of God.
Let me now address another important passage from the Commentary on the
Seuenty Names of Metatron. In section 30, 'Uzah is mentioned as one of the names of
the archangel. Its numerical valence is calculated as 19 and as identical with Havah,
namely Eve, since Enoch was the offspring of Adam and Eve, a child of "flesh and
blood." Then the author adduces another name, 'AHiY, which means "my
brother," which also amounts to 19. The meaning of "my brother" is described as
follows: "he [Enoch] become as a brother to the Holy One, blessed be He, because
he judges in the firmament after the Holy One, blessed be He." 60 Therefore,
Metatron is not just an angel or, according to another passage in this book, the
adopted son of God, 61 but also an entity similar to His brother. 62 In some other
cases, the two figures occur together in an emphatic manner. 6 '
It seems therefore that in Italy, long before any other place in Europe, issues
related to these themes permeated the thought of a major figure, and their pres-
ence in the peninsula may explain how those views, otherwise unknown, reached
the Ashkenazi regions. It is plausible that Italy first imported those views from
some early groups in the land of Israel, and then exported them to Germany.
One more important observation on our topic: as we saw in the Introduction,
'Ahima'atz described his ancestors not only as experts in esoterica, but also as
engaging in activities such as contemplating the Divine Chariot. Thus, we have
testimony that the Heikhalot literature was used both magically and mystically in
the mid-eighth century, even outside the land of Israel. 64 The fact that the ances-
tors were some kind of mystics did not foreclose magical inclinations, or vice
versa. A similar combination is found in R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, who describes
the magical powers of some of the names of Metatron but also describes prophecy
as some form of enthronement. So, for example, we read in his Commentary on the
Seuenty Names of Metatron about the translation of Enoch that "he had two like-
nesses [shetei demuyiot]: 65 at the beginning he had the likeness of a man 66 and, at
the end, the likeness of an angel ... so that when He has chosen a prophet to
worship him 67 He will elevate him [yariymehu] 68 by means of the radiance of the
Glory, [to sit] upon the seat of Glory." 69
If my proposal of yariymehu, "he will elevate him," is indeed correct, this passage
addresses a pattern of apotheosis by enthronement, and not only contemplation of
a sublime throne from a distance, as in the case of many descriptions in the
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The Angel Named Righteous
Heikhalot literature. This specific type of experience is already found in much earlier
forms of Jewish mystical literature in connection with Enoch. 70 However, what is
more important is the fact that the Heikhalot hero, Enoch, becomes a paradigm for
understanding the nature of prophecy as related to enthronement. To be sure,
enthronement is quite a widespread theme in late antiquity as a way of describing
elevation, and it is found also in a Jewish Hellenistic text. 71 In any case, the theme of
enthronement is known in the lifetime of R. Nehemiah, from a passage in R. Eleazar
of Worms dealing with the recipient of the secrets of the Merkavah, who is compared
to an enthroned Adam. 7i Thus descriptions of the old figures were sometimes
accompanied by the assumption that those experiences were still available.
In general terms, then, R. Nehemiah is in concert rather than in conflict with a
view of R. Eleazar of Worms, 73 although whereas the former speaks about the ele-
vation of the body, the latter speaks about the elevation of the soul. However, the
important fact for the discussion here is the interpretation of prophecy proposed
by R. Nehemiah, a person who was himself described as a prophet. Thus, we may
suggest that in Ashkenazi Jewish culture, a person who was described as a prophet
was deeply affected by the Heikhalot literature and espoused some themes that are
hardly identifiable except in the poems of the ninth-century R. 'Amittai.
Let me compare the semiotic tenor of these discussions to that of the
theosophical and ecstatic Kabbalists. The basic worldview of both R. 'Amittai and
R. Nehemiah is concrete and continuous. No allegoresis or analogical symbol-
ism, 74 but an almost ontic continuity of a universe linked by the median angel, is
dominant in these discussions. No emanation theory is invoked, nor does a
theology of a deus absconditus preside over the lower universe. It is this concept of a
more unified universe, which is also reflected in many other discussions, that was
transformed by the arrival and integration of new speculative corpora of Greek
and Hellenistic origins in Judaism, and the various reactions to them both in the
Ashkenazi-French milieus and in the Provencal-Spanish ones. This transforma-
tion is already evident in R. Nathan of Rome's interpretation of the Pardes
legend in Sefer ha-'Arukh, as seen above in the Introduction; but it was only in the
new waves of speculative knowledge that arrived in Italy from the West in the
thirteenth century that the new comprehensive religious worldviews began their
crystallization in Italy.
•323-
APPENDIX 2
The Infant Experiment:
On the Search for the First Language in Italy
i. Introduction
As we have seen above, a preoccupation with the origins of knowledge was part
and parcel of the revival known as the Renaissance. My assumption is that this
search for old sources was an attempt to find sources of authority in a time when
new material was being introduced on the intellectual market. Johann Reuchlin's
attempt to see in Kabbalah an ancient philosophy that inspired Pythagoras repre-
sents just such an effort. Let me now turn to another attempt to claim superiority
by establishing anteriority.
The search for a primordial language was as much a concern of many Kabbalists
as it is of some modern linguists attempting to reconstruct the alleged Ursprache. 1
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The Infant Experiment
Beginning in the Middle Ages, millions of Jews regarded Hebrew as the primordial
language. Extrapolating from the Bible, where God is described as using the holy
language for both creation and revelation, most ancient and medieval Jews
assumed that the first recorded dialogues took place in Hebrew. This view was
explicated in a medieval midrashic discussion. 2 But the most articulate medieval
account was formulated by R Yehudah ha-Levi, a twelfth-century theologian active
in Spain, who strenuously insisted on the perfection and superiority of Hebrew in
an attempt to counteract Muslim claims about the superiority of the Qur'an and
Arabic. 3 After the mid-twelfth century, Jewish thinkers exploring the nature of lan-
guage were less emphatic about the superiority of Hebrew. Their reluctance to rely
upon the "evidence" of the ancient canons, whose authority was accepted not only
by Jews but also by Christians, owes much to the encounter with the more natural-
istic approach stemming from Greek philosophical and scientific sources as
mediated by the Arabic language and culture.
Before surveying the various Hebrew versions of the infant story, it is worth
noting that the first descriptions of an experiment to establish the first language
by observing an uneducated infant are found in Herodotus 2.2 and in the thir-
teenth-century chronicle by Fra Salimbene, which deals with the escapades of
Frederick II. By and large, this issue did not attract the attention of Christian
authors, and even Salimbene's account of Frederick's experiment does not reflect
his own curiosity about the first language, but rather a concern to list instances of
the monarch's cruelty; Frederick's "experiment" provided no answers, because
the children died. 4
2. Three Philosophical Stands
Semitic Phonetics as Original Language
R Abraham ibn Ezra, the mid-twelfth-century thinker, commentator, astronomer,
and linguist, 5 engaged this issue in one of his numerous writings on the Hebrew
language, Sefer Safah Berurah, composed either in Italy or after his visit there. 6
So first I searched to discover which is the first [ro'shah] 7 of all languages.
Many have said that Aramaic is the most ancient [qadmonit], 8 and that it is
even in the nature of man to speak it without having been taught by anyone,
and that if a newborn child were placed in a desert with no one but a mute
wet nurse to nurse him, he would speak Aramaic. And that is because if a
child is taught a foreign language he forgets his natural language [leshon
toladah]. But these words are utterly without meaning, for something
[learned] as a result of chance cannot cause one to forget his natural
[language], which is the root. Moreover, the sacred language and the
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Appendix 2
Aramaic one and the Arabic one [leshon Qeidar] are one language and one
speech [Genesis ii:i]. 9
An excellent linguist, Ibn Ezra supports his theory of the resemblance among
the three languages by citing phonetic similarities such as the use of guttural
sounds. This comparative exercise reinforces the theory about the existence of a
primordial language, believed by some people to have been Aramaic. However,
Ibn Ezra rejects the idea that someone forgets the natural language when he is
taught another one. What is common to the two points, the existence of shared
features in the three Semitic languages and the rejection of the theory of oblivion,
is the fact that language consists not solely, or even quintessentially, of semantic
components but rather of phonetic ones: "all the nations, in all the lands, are
equal in [their] pronunciation, but are distinguished from one another [only]
slightly by the speech [namely utterance] of their sounds in a clear way." 10 Ibn
Ezra's rejection of oblivion is reinforced by another astute observation. Immediately
before the passage on his search for the first language, he discusses the famous
passage in Genesis about Adam's calling things by their names. He indicates that
God would not have assigned such a task to a stupid person, and so we must admit
that Adam knew the nature of the animals; then Ibn Ezra writes: "He, blessed be
He, planted in man the power to pronounce sounds." 11 1 read this assessmentas an
attempt to solve the problem not of the human capacity to know the nature of
things, but of the capacity to express what that nature is. Here Ibn Ezra makes
another fine point: he claims not that God planted the faculty of pronunciation in
Adam, but that He planted it in man. In Hebrew the difference is quite subtle.
Adam is the primordial man, while ha-'adam designates the species of man. Thus,
pronunciation, like intelligence, may be understood as an attribute of humankind
in general, and not only of the mythical first man. If so, content, namely the nature
of things, and the power of expressing what that nature is are not restricted to a
mythical event, but are part of the nature of man as man. Thus, if all the ancient
languages share some phonetic features, those features will not be forgotten by
the study of another, somewhat different language.
Ibn Ezra's opinion that the primordial language was Aramaic and not Hebrew
is quite rare in the Jewish sources. 12 He dissented from the prevailing acceptance
of Hebrew as the first language and shifted the focus from texts to linguistic facts.
Hebrew Phonetics and Semantics
In his correspondence with another philosopher, R. Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen,
R Hillel ben Shemuel, who lived in Capua or Verona (or, according to another
source, Ferrara) in the thirteenth century, presents the following version of the
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The Infant Experiment
infant experiment: "If the infant has been for a long period among mute persons
or among nonspeaking nurses, who do not speak among themselves before him
at all, after a while, when the natures [ha-teua'im] 13 [of the child] emerge and
strengthen, it is part of the nature that he will speak hesitantly or stammer. 14 The
majority of his stammering will be pronounced words until he reaches the stage of
perfect speech out of this stammering, and the language he speaks at the begin-
ning will undoubtedly be the holy language, because it was the first and it was
given to Adam by [his] nature [be-teua']." 15
This stance is apparently closer to that of R Abraham ibn Ezra than to that of
Hillel's own student, Abulafia. Hillel believes that, by nature, the infant is imprinted
with the capacity for speech, which will emerge in the form of stammering, which
will change into a clear-cut speech, which will be Hebrew. Hillel's inclusion of "by
nature" in his account produces a perspective that differs from the formulation —
though perhaps not the intention — of Ibn Ezra, who describes God's implantation
of the speech faculty in man. In Hillel's account, language may be part of the per-
fect nature of man. Thus, by a different route, Hillel may point to the same idea of
the perfect phonetic over the perfect semantic. The phonetic aspect of language is
hinted at by the stammering, which implies an initial stage in a progression. I
assume that the first stage involves confused sounds that gradually become articu-
lated. The stammering points to overcoming an initial imperfection, but from the
very beginning the phonetic apparatus is described as if designed to generate the
sounds of Hebrew. The transition from stammering to perfect speech may stand,
as J. B. Sermoneta has proposed, as the perfection of the speech organs, referred to
here as the strengthening of "the natures [ha-teua'im]." 16 This phonetic reading
does not preclude also a semantic one; the passage should be understood not only
as that the sounds produced by the child correspond to those of Hebrew but also as
that the combinations of letters into words having a meaning in Hebrew.
A Rejection of Hebrew as a Natural Language
R Hillel's naturalistic stand infuriated his much more extreme contemporary, the
Maimonidean philosopher Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen, originally from Barcelona
but a resident of Rome in the late 1270s and the 1280s. He emphatically rejected
the assumption that Hebrew, or language in general, was an integral part of
human nature and asserted instead that a child raised among mute people would
not speak at all but would perhaps "bark like a dog." 17 If Hebrew was a natural
capacity of Adam, then everyone would speak Hebrew. Zerahyah's behaviorist
approach presupposes that language is learned by imitation, and is basically an
acquired faculty.
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Appendix 2
3. Three Kabbalistic Models
Although the three philosophical positions surveyed above tend to a naturalistic
understanding of the infant experiment, among the Kabbalists discussed below
three different models can be discerned in the way the experiment is understood.
Since I have articulated elsewhere the phenomenological structure of three major
models of Kabbalah, 18 here I shall refer to them only in the detail necessary for
understanding the different interpretations of the experiment.
Abraham Abulafia: An Ecstatic Model
As we have seen, Abraham Abulafia traveled from Capua, Italy, to the Iberian pen-
insula, studying Kabbalah in Barcelona in 1270. Thereafter he became not only a
dedicated Kabbalist but also the founder of a new form, the ecstatic one, which
differed from the main trend of Kabbalah — which concentrated more on the
nature of the divine manifestations — in his evident concern with language, its
nature, and the technique of its manipulation either as part of a mystical practice
or as an exegetical device. 19 In one of his earliest kabbalistic writings, Mafieah ha-
Re'ayon, composed in 1273, language is the major subject. Among a variety of top-
ics, he addresses the question of the original language, an issue that will fascinate
him for years to come. In this context he adduces a famous story about an experi-
ment to discover what the first language was, whose methodology consisted in
preventing an infant from listening to any language. His use of this story may
reflect awareness of Ibn Ezra's book. 20 In Sefer Mafieah ha-Re'ayon we read:
[a] Know that for every human being who has come to be, there was a human
being who preceded him, and so on until Adam. So, too, be informed that for
any speaker of any language to have come to speak, there were earlier users
of spoken language. And if not, for the previous existence of language there
would never have been a speaker, for such is [human] nature [ha-teva'].
Observe the various forms and representations and imaginative devices
[used by] human education [in order to] determine the language ability of a
child until he becomes a proficient speaker of a language, [b] Therefore, it is
certain that if we were to imagine that if a child were, by agreement, aban-
doned to be raised by a mute, that he would by himself learn to speak the holy
language, this would be no reason to sustain [the experiment]. And even if
you heard that a particular king conducted this experiment and found it to be
the case, if you possess reason and perceive truth ... so, too, concerning our
belief that the child was a Hebrew speaker, being in actuality a nonspeaker,
this would be a very good story, for we would thereby raise the stature of our
language in the ears of those who adhere to this story, although it be an
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entirely false fabrication. In addition, he diminishes the stature of the proofs
he uses. And as for me, it is not wise to use false claims to raise the stature of
anything. . . . However, since our language is indeed of a higher quality, but
for different reasons . . . therefore it is called the "holy language." 21
The story of the mute nurse, which may have reached Abulafia from oral tradi-
tions related to the alleged experiment of Frederick II, should be understood on
two different levels. The first one is the factual: the diffusion of such a story about
a real experiment should not be believed, because it contradicts reason. As the
educational efforts necessary for the learning of a language, including Hebrew,
demonstrate, a spontaneous production of language, both phonetic and seman-
tic, is precluded by observation. Thus, the experiment story cannot generate solid
evidence for the priority of Hebrew, although its dissemination on a false pre-
sumption may fortify the status of Hebrew. Abulafia clearly rejects the use of such
traditions or stories. On another level, he presupposes the need for the existence
of a language prior to any existing conventional language. His argument is logical,
based on experience, and not theological or scriptural. Nevertheless, he is eager to
point out that human nature alone cannot reach the attainment of language with-
out external guidance. Though equipped with the linguistic apparatus, man would
not operate it spontaneously. The importance of the vocal equipage is mentioned
in a very important passage:
But the form that comprises all writing is the "form of speech [tzurat ha-dib-
bur]," which is natural and adheres to the mouth, and is also inscribed in the
heart [haquqim ba-Ieu] in the moment of formation. And the witness to it is
the fact that if this [namely the form of speech] were not the form of man, he
would not [be able to] speak, neither would the essence of his existence
[mahut metzi'uto] be speech. And you know that the quintessence of man is a
living [and] speaking [medabber] being; and the form of life is perfected in
the senses, and the "form of speech" is perfected by the intellect. 22
As in the case of Abraham ibn Ezra, the vocal and intellectual components of
language are crucial; both are inscribed in human nature from the very beginning,
and their perfection constitutes human perfection. The use of the phrase "form of
speech" is parallel to Dante's contemporary expression jbrma locutionis, a term that
is apparently not found before Dante. 23 1 do not wish to belabor the implications of
such a striking similarity, especially given that Abulafia wrote these words in
Spain, though after his first sojourn and study in Italy.
The next passage of interest to us comes from one of Abulafia's most wide-
spread writings, Sejer 'Or ha-Sekhel, composed in Sicily sometime in the mid-i28os:
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The human intellect is the mover of all languages, although it is itself immov-
able, either by its essence or by accident, and what is intended is the human
intellect operating within the human species in actu from its side, but in poten-
tia from their [humans'] side. And it [the intellect] changed the languages
after they were one entity, understood by all speakers, and also today they are
one entity, [a circumstance] which is, nevertheless, not understood by all
speakers. And this was the cause of the dispersion of the nations, as is hinted
at in the secret of [the pericope of] dispersion, and from [the verse] "So the
Lord scattered them" [Genesis 11:8] , and from "The Lord confounded them"
[Genesis 11:9]. Because when you find one nation in India and the other in
Kush, and the one is at an extreme distance from the other, and the language
of the one nation accords with [muskkemer] its environment, 24 and the lan-
guage of the other with its environment, and one does not see the other, and
there are no negotiations between the two, the geographical distance
between the two is the reason for the fact that one nation does not under-
stand the language of the other; and it is already clear that languages are
conventional but that speech is natural but not conventional. And man's
nature does not compel him to cause the transition of what is possible in
potentia into actu by speech, and [so it is with respect to] all the crafts: despite
the fact that they are possible in potentia, if he does not study them he will
never know them. They are not like youth and agedness, which are in potentia
but will pass into actu by necessity; and there is no obstacle to this transition,
except only the absence of his form. Therefore these outcomes [namely
youth and agedness] will not reach him as a result of study or exercises, but
as a result of nature. However, knowledge of the crafts and the understand-
ing of speech are spiritual capacities, which need an agent that causes their
passing from potentia into actu. And if an agent that causes the transition is
not found, they [the crafts] will pass into actu. And because man possesses
an intellect in actu, if he is taught, he will receive, and if not, he will not. And
because he compares one topic to another even if he has not studied, after he
has seen someone who has studied he imagines the outcome of a certain act,
and it is possible that he will perform an act similar to that act by accident,
without studying it, or will combine one act with another and generate a
third act, because everything follows the natural issue. 25
This passage has a direct impact on the way we should properly understand
Abulafia's view of language as represented in the passage dealing with the infant
ordeal. Speech is defined here as a possibility found in potentia, in Hebrew be-koah
'efshari. It needs either a conscious external agent to teach the infant to speak or at
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The Infant Experiment
least a model of imitation, which will enable the infant to project what he hears in
a way that will enable him to create his own linguistic acts. Therefore, innate
though the language capacity is in the infant, it cannot be actualized without the
minimum of a speaking model. Innate capacity and environment are therefore
quintessential for the emergence of the actual use of language. But who is the
agent that can actualize the hypothetical Adam into a speaking being? The answer
offered to this question, formulated in the passage from Sefer ha-Melammed, can be
found in the passage from Sefer 'Or ha-Seldiel: the human intellect, or the intellect
active within the human species, is such a possible agent. This answer is correct in
general because according to a statement in Sefer Hayyei ha-Nefesh, the intellect
causes the emergence of speech. 26 But what is the specific nature of the intellect
mentioned by Abulafia in the passage quoted just above? On the one hand, he
speaks about the "human intellect," namely the intellect found in the human
body. On the other hand, he speaks about the intellect operating within the human
species. According to Jewish medieval Neo-Aristotelian traditions, influenced by
Arabic sources, this is the Agent Intellect, a cosmic intellect conceived of as sepa-
rate from matter. 27 In the classical formulations of the Arabo-Jewish philosophical
tradition, as found for example in Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, it would be a
contradiction in terms to speak about the Agent Intellect as found in matter.
However, it seems that a less widespread view of the cosmic intellect among the
Jews, as exposed for example by Averroes, 28 might explain the Abulafian concept.
In Sefer 'Or ha-Seldiel, in a passage preceding the one quoted above, Abulafia dis-
cusses the interaction between the separate and the human intellects as follows:
"the active intellect, which produces in us an active intellect in actu, is the Lord of
All the Worlds, not another of all of the separated intellects. And the intellect that
is ours is the tenth, [and] is all [ha-kol], and is reserved to the First Cause." 29
Thus, the human intellect can be described as an active intellect. A few lines
later Abulafia asserts that a leader has to comprise two modes: the one separate
from the outcomes it guides, which does not move together with the things that it
moves; and an immovable one, which does not participate in the moved out-
comes. 30 No doubt this is the case of the intellect that is conceived, according to
Averroes, as both a separate spiritual entity and one immersed in matter. According
Abulafia's Ve-Zot Li-Yhudah, the Agent Intellect is identified with primordial
speech, 31 while biblical revelation, more precisely the dialogue between Moses and
God, is described as the divine use of Moses' voice in order to transform the divine
intellectual message into a voiced one. 32 Thus, an ordinary person cannot acquire
human speech without a human model, the speaking nurse, but we may imagine
that Adam, either as a historical person or as a species, could acquire speech as a
result of the impact of the intellectual influx upon the organic apparatus. So, for
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example, we learn that "speech is conceptualized [metzuyyar ba-sekhel] 33 in the
intellect, and the imaginative faculty [ue-koah ha-medammeh] and the appetitive
faculty and the sensory one are ruled by it . . . and the intellect commands speech,
and speech commands desire, and desire the imagination, and imagination
the senses, and the senses become active in order to fulfill the command of the
intellect." 34
Already in Abulafia's first book, Sejer Get ha-Shemot, we read:
All languages are included within the language that underlies them all, 35
that is, the holy language [leshon qodesh], expressed through 22 letters 36 and
five ways of pronunciation 37 . . . for there is no speech or writ but this, and
there are no other letters, for they are holy, and this is the holy language,
[the consonants of qodesh being] qufvav daleth shin. This is theos in Greek 38
tyuyut [tav vav], and snty or sntu in Italian — synnun tynnyu [shin nun tav vav] i9
or tyt uyu [tet vav] . So if you recite any of the seventy languages you find that
its letters are none other than those of the holy language, and that all is but
one matter; only that this language is available to those who know, and not
available to those who do not. Pay attention to this exalted matter, for it
contains a secret derived from the verse "And the whole earth was of one
language and of one speech" [Genesis 11:1] , and it is further indicated in the
verse that refers to the messianic era: "For then will I turn to all nations a
pure language, that all of the seventy languages be included in the holy
language" [Zephaniah 3:g]. 4 °
The holy language, which comprises all the others, is not precisely Hebrew
according to its semantic nature but much more the fundamental elements, the
consonants and the vowels, and the principle of combination of letters, which is
one of the major sources of the diversification of languages. Since meaning is also
found in other languages in combinations that are meaningless in Hebrew,
Abulafia, unlike the theosophical Kabbalists, was strongly inclined to use a variety
of words in other languages, in order to calculate their numerical values and to put
them in relationship with Hebrew words. So, for example, he used Arabic, Greek,
Latin, Italian, Basque, Tatar, and German, and some examples are found in the
previous discussions. Thus, he attenuated the stark differences between those lan-
guages and historical Hebrew, by assuming that they were part of the universal
Hebrew, conceived of as the perfect and original language. Language is also con-
ceived of as both the technique for reaching and the vehicle for attaining a divine
revelation: with regard to "the true essence of prophecy, its cause is the 'word' that
reaches the prophet from God by means of the 'perfect language,' which includes
under it the seventy languages." 41
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The Infant Experiment
Abulafia emphasizes the natural essence of human language less as revealed
by God than as part and parcel of the human constitution. As what is natural,
language is also divine; the two concepts overlap in Abulafia's views. 42 In
many respects the model of the ecstatic Kabbalist is much closer to Aristotelian
naturalism than are the two models explored below.
R Aharon Berakhiah of Modena: Linguistic Immanence
An interesting version of the infant experiment is found in a famous book by R.
Aharon Berakhiah of Modena, Sefer Ma'avar Yaboq, printed in Mantua in 1626. 43 In
the context of the three models organizing kabbalistic thinking, Aharon Berakhiah
articulates the magical or talismanic model, which assumes that language is part
of the natural order and that it is possible to attract the divine power here below by
means of linguistic and other forms of rituals. This model, which is found already
at the end of the thirteenth century, is well represented in the writings of one of the
Kabbalists who had a lasting impact on Aharon Berakhiah of Modena, namely the
Safedian sixteenth-century R. Moshe Cordovero. 44 The Italian Kabbalist writes:
Because nature has imprinted this word in the mouths of infants . . . even
the children of non-Jews at the beginning of their speech say "Yako." . . .
And it is already known from the story . . . that a child that has not heard any
language at the beginning of his speech will speak the holy language,
because the master of nature, which is 'Elohim, which amounts in the
gematria to "Nature," has imprinted it in such a way on His world, by
the secret of the letters of His Torah, into which He looked and created the
world. 45
Let me start with what seems to me the most interesting element of this pas-
sage: God or nature, these being one and the same thing, imprinted the Hebrew
letters both on humans' inner nature and on external nature. The constitution of
the world, like that of the infant, is informed by the same divine power; in fact
Aharon Berakhiah' s vision involves a linguistic immanence that permeates exis-
tence, human and nonhuman. Not only is language imprinted separately on man
and nature; the correspondence between the names given by Adam and the things
he named is also significant because Adam understood the "spiritual power
[ruhaniyyut] 46 of the letters," which constitute the names that correspond to natu-
ral entities. 47 Moreover, the human soul itself is formed out of the holy letters. 48
The structure of the world as reflecting that of the Torah is an old midrashic
leitmotif, quoted almost verbatim at the end of the passage above: God contem-
plated the preexisting Torah and created the world, just as Plato's demiurge con-
templated the world of the ideas for the same purpose. 49 What the Kabbalist adds
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Appendix 2
here is an emphasis upon the letters of the Torah, which are the elements relevant
for a correspondence with spoken language. The inscribing power is designated
as 'Elohim, which in several kabbalistic sources, as here, is identified with nature,
because the Hebrew term for nature, ha-teua', is numerically equivalent to 'Elohim.
This equivalence is very important not only for a more naturalistic understanding
of some forms of Kabbalah, as found already in Abulafia and the young Joseph
Gikatilla, but also, I assume, for a better understanding of the background of
Spinoza's famous expression Deus siue narura. 50 The double signature of God upon
nature and upon the speech of man is also reminiscent of the famous view of
Jacob Boehme, who compared the two as expressing the divine presence on the
mundane plane. 51
Let us return to the infant experiment. What is the nature of the primordial
word Yako? Aharon Berakhiah explains its origin just before the passage quoted
above: "Some few days after their birth, children will say, as the beginning of their
speech, the word Yako, and so also light-minded women [namely prostitutes] are
accustomed to say Aho. The infant says Yako of his own volition, and wise nature
has accustomed him to do so, since he [the infant] [thereby] blesses himself as
he says: Yasimeni 'Elohim ke-'Efraiym u-Menasheh, 'God make me as Ephraim
and Menasseh,' or Yasimkhem 'Elohim ke-'Efrayyim u-Menasheh, 'God make you as
Ephraim and Menasseh,' and he [thereby also] blesses his father and mother who
have begotten him." 52
The word Yako is therefore conceived of as an emblem, which is the acronym of
the first letters of Jacob's blessing, and with this word the infant blesses himself
and his parents for begetting him. Wise nature teaches the infant a respectful
mode of behavior. Jewish or not, the unconscious knowledge of Hebrew, as repre-
sented by what I take to be an onomatopoeic sound, is innate in the infant and is
subsequently forgotten. Let us return to the "first word," which is in fact an acro-
nym: Yako. The Kabbalist mentions twice that it is a blessing, and indeed the two
formulas are a slight variation on Jacob's blessing to his youngest sons in Genesis
48:20, and a formula used by Jews to this day to bless their male offspring at
the ritual of the beginning of the Sabbath. The nexus between the formula and the
concept of blessing is explicit.
We may learn something more about Aharon Berakhiah's concept of language
by turning to his concept of blessing, treated in the same book. In a very important
passage, which reflects earlier kabbalistic views and may have served as a channel
for their transmission to much later generations, we read:
"By all His ways," even by the corporeal ones, "you shall know Him"
[Proverbs 3:6], namely the Holy one, blessed be He, and cleave to Him, and
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The Infant Experiment
He will guide your corporeal ways to His worship, so that you shall attain
true happiness [ha-'osher ha-'amitti] . And the blessing after [the performance
of] the commandments and the acts [ha-pe'ulot] consists in the drawing
down of the spiritual power [ruhaniyyut] from the height of the degrees
to the sefirah Malkhut, 53 which collects all the influxes that she receives
from the [sefirah], and this is the reason why it is called the Knesset
Yisrael. Thereafter the influx is drawn onto the lower entities, although it is
incumbent on us to draw it down [only] onto her [namely Malkhut] . 54
Here, as in Cordovero, the act of blessing is understood as bringing down the
divine power from the highest of the sefirotic powers to the lowest, Malkhut, and
then to the lower beings. Blessing is therefore not only an expression of a good
wish, a traditional formula, but actually a magical act, linguistic by essence. When
blessing himself and his parents, the infant uses one word that is the quintessence
of blessing, and there is good reason to assume that the Kabbalist understood its
efficacy in talismanic terms. 55 In other words, the nexus between Jacob's blessing
in the Torah and the first sounds uttered by the infant, understood to be also a
blessing, may reflect a broader dynamic that automatically ensures the descent of
power upon the formulas that are pronounced correctly. Such a dynamic seems to
be implied in the mention of worshipping God even by deeds, which are purely
corporeal and not related to halakhic deeds. In any case, it is unlikely that a
Kabbalist would consider the formula that is the quintessence of the blessing as
merely a matter of expressing a wish, since the child in any case does not under-
stand the content of Yako, and if this word is significant at all, its significance is not
semantic but, so I am inclined to assume, talismanic. Language, namely the
perfect language, must operate independently of the speaking agent in order to be
effective. Whereas the ecstatic Kabbalah regarded language as a means to reach a
mystical experience, the talismanic Kabbalah would understand the main role
of language as instrumental in bringing the divine power downward, for either
magical or mystical purposes.
R. 'Ovadiah the Prophet: The Theosophical Model
R 'Ovadiah the prophet, about whom we know nothing except that he was appar-
ently a contemporary of Aharon Berakhiah of Modena, preserved a unique version
of the infant experiment. In one of his glosses on the commentary of Rashi, the
famous eleventh-century commentator, he relates the following story:
I have heard from my teacher that sometimes the king Ben Hadad 56 asked
the sages of Israel: "How do you know whether the holy language is the best
of the languages and the first [ro'sh] 57 of [all] the languages, and that this
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Appendix 2
language is spoken in heaven? They answered him: "Take two babies from
the day they are born and appoint over them someone to survey [them] so
that no one will speak with them any language, even the holy language, until
the age of seven, because it is at this age that understanding comes to the
child, so that he understands all things thereafter. And [you will] see that
they will speak only the holy language at the end of these seven years." And
the king did so. He took two Israelite infants on the [very] day they were
born, and [as they were] males [he] circumcised [them] , and he took also a
female [infant] . And he put them in a dark house, and he alone gave them
food and drink, and he did not speak with them at all, as the sages had
instructed him; the sages had told him to take children of Israel and to
circumcise the males. And the king did not speak with them, nor did he use
the holy language until the end of the seven years. Then he took them from
this chamber and spoke with them in the holy language, and the children
answered all his questions in the holy language, and they did not under-
stand any other language. And my teacher told me that this is the case just at
the end of the seven years, because then the sefirah Binah presides over
man. The king also took two uncircumcised children, non-Iewish, and did
not circumcise them, and he put them [in the house], and the male could
not speak but resembled a mute person, until he was instructed to speak.
But the female spoke in the holy language. And whoever has brains in his
head will understand it [namely the topic discussed beforehand] according
to his intelligence, that the Holy One, blessed be He, has given to man a rank
higher than that of the animals and beasts, which [consists of] the speaking
faculty. Even if he stays closed in darkness and separated from man, the
speaking faculty is not separated [namely divorced] from him. The fact that
the uncircumcised child did not speak was a miracle, because he was not
circumcised. 58
Many formulations found in this passage are quite awkward in their Hebrew
original, and I would not say that the logic of the discourse is always evident in this
text in general. Nevertheless, it is conspicuous that unlike all the former discus-
sions, R. 'Ovadiah the prophet — or perhaps his anonymous teacher — was
oriented to a more particularist understanding of the actualization of language.
Circumcision is regarded as the touchstone for the attainment of an independent
linguistic status. It is far from being clear precisely how this operation is thought
to prepare the infant for knowledge of the holy language. We may speculate, on
the basis of the nexus in some sources between circumcision and the inscription
of the divine name on the penis or, according to another tradition, on the body of
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The Infant Experiment
man in general, that the divine name was thought to have a special power of
enabling someone to understand Hebrew. Although this explanation is no more
than a speculation, what appears to be more certain is the fact that the age of seven
is related to the acquisition of wisdom, as the third sefirah, Binah, is conceived of
as being appointed to watch over humans at that age. In some sources, this sefirah
is related to the concept of language. In any case this is a quite theosophical expla-
nation, which presupposes a correlation between the growth of human beings
and the different divine powers, in a manner reminiscent of the psychology char-
acteristic of the Zohar. Unlike the two other models, which regard the efficacy of
language as depending upon human acts, in this case man — in our case the
infant — is strongly conditioned by supernal processes and occult sympathies and
correlations.
4. Some Conclusions
The emergence, from the twelfth century on, of sustained discussions about the
nature of language in general, and the infant experiment in particular, was part of
an attempt by Jewish intellectuals, philosophers, and Kabbalists altogether to
establish their religious and cultural identity vis-a-vis their Muslim and Christian
intellectual environments. Either as attempts to counteract Muslims' claims
about the superiority of Arabic, or as attempts to neutralize the claims of Jewish
thinkers, mostly philosophers, about the conventionality of language in general,
including Hebrew, some Jewish authors strove to conceptualize the view,
expressed in less elaborated ways by many of their predecessors, that Hebrew was
the primordial language.
Two major lines of thought emerge from the discussions above. The first
emphasizes phonetics as the natural and perfect language and is more universal-
is!. It assumes the paradigmatic superiority of Hebrew as a repository of the
twenty-two perfect phonemes, but also that, semantically speaking, every word in
non-Hebrew languages that can be reduced to the twenty-two letters will have a
certain meaning even if it is yet unknown. Though conferring a paramount role to
the oral aspect of Hebrew, this approach cannot be seen as a simple claim to the
superiority of the Jews who practice this language as a specific combination of
ideal sounds and perfect letters, because most of them did not use Hebrew as a
vernacular, although they often used it as a written language. This discrepancy
between ideal and praxis is most explicit in a passage by Abraham Abulafia, one of
the major exponents of the phonetic theory. 59
On the other hand, the semantic approach is much more particularist: not only
the phonemes but also entire Hebrew words are conceived of as natural, either
because of the divine promulgation or because of their "natural" expression of the
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Appendix 2
essences of things. The major motivation in the discussions surveyed above is not
the discovery of the alphabet of nature, namely an attempt to understand the cos-
mic order by decoding the imprint or the signature of the divine language, but
linguistic concern. Whereas for many of the Christian thinkers concerned with the
first language there was a nexus between the primordial and natural language, in
the sense that language corresponded to nature, the Jews were more concerned
with the nature of man, seen as an eminently speaking being. The inner rather
than the external nature is the main focus of the infant story, and this is part of the
more inward orientation of the Jewish interest in language. Whether thinkers were
oriented to a universalist or particularist approach, nature remained at the margin
of Jewish discussions of language. This distinction was already discernible in the
thirteenth century, when Abulafia used combinations of letters in pursuit of attain-
ing a prophetic experience, whereas Ramon Llull was more concerned with exter-
nal topics, theological or natural. 60 Although the passage by R. Aharon Berakhiah
expands the scope of the discussion of the infant experiment to nature, this exten-
sion, too, emphasizes the affinity between nature and the Torah. While the search
for the perfect and primordial language was connected in European thought to the
idea of a comprehensive and natural philosophy, with the Jews it had often to do
with the validation of the sacred text. More concerned with communication and
with knowledge of objects, Christian thinkers — and some Jewish philosophers —
tended to see language as conducive to cognition; most Jewish thinkers, especially
Kabbalists, conceived of words more as modes of influence or as instruments for
discovering the meaning of the divine message as inscribed in the Bible.
To the extent that we know the circumstances of the lives of the authors dis-
cussed above, they were connected in one way or another to Italy. Why did the
stories of experiments with infants not draw the attention of Jewish authors
outside Italian soil? Although my answer can be no more than speculation, it nev-
ertheless seems to illuminate a certain facet of Jewish culture. If we assume that
the sources that significantly influenced the Jews were composed in Italy — and
this seems to be the case insofar as the version of Salimbene is concerned — then
the Jewish authors dealt with here borrowed the story from the Latin culture, but
gave it a special twist, a phenomenon that is obvious already in the case of Ibn
Ezra. Unlike their Spanish contemporaries during the thirteenth century and later,
the Italian Jews were more open to the Christian environment and thought; this
trend is especially evident in the case of R. Hillel of Verona. 61 Cooperation between
Jewish and Christian scholars was much more salient in Italy than anywhere else
in Europe both in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance. 62 Last but not least, let
me introduce some statistical evidence: though starting its life in the history by the
Greek pagan Herodotus, and then being connected to the Christian Frederick II, 6 '
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The Infant Experiment
the story of the infant experiment survives in a greater number of Hebrew versions
than Latin ones. Given the vastness of Latin medieval literature in comparison to
the corpus of medieval writings in Hebrew, this greater concern with the meaning
of the experiment is surely a reflection of the cultures in which they occurred:
while the Jews were more interested in the priority of their language, the Christian
thinkers were more concerned with ideas about what constituted the perfect
language.
•339-
APPENDIX 3
R. YOHANAN ALEMANNO'S STUDY PROGRAM
As we saw earlier, Alemanno's autograph Liqqutim, or Collectanea, is a collection of
quotations from different sources, all quoted in Hebrew. In addition to these
numerous citations, the work contains notes and explanatory glosses by Alemanno. 1
Folio 64b of Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana, Catalogue A. Neubauer 2234 (= Reggio 23),
presents a curriculum and syllabus of works recommended for those striving to
attain intellectual success. This document is interesting from several points of view:
[a] The selection provides a reliable indication of the sources that were
available to Alemanno and the breadth of his intellectual interests.
[b] Because the curriculum is structured progressively, and implicitly also
hierarchically, culminating in the works considered most valuable in the
• 34 o-
Alemanno's Study Program
attainment of the ultimate knowledge, and because it is also structured
according to the different fields of knowledge, it reveals Alemanno's
assessment of the relative value of philosophy, Kabbalah, and magic,
[c] The content of the list indicates that for Alemanno, as for Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola, magic enjoyed a high status. Indeed, some of the
Jewish texts cited by Alemanno are the same as those in Pico's library,
which contained Hebrew books 2 as well as translations from Hebrew
made by his collaborators, in particular Flavius Mithridates.
Here is a translation of Alemanno's Hebrew text, with a minimal apparatus.
This is the order of study for the person whom God has endowed so that he
will reach human felicity [Hatzlahah 'enoshit] 3 at the end of his days in accor-
dance with our times, and in accordance with the books that are found
among us today, and in accordance with the proper time, and in accordance
with his will to dedicate himself [to study] .
From the age of four to the age of thirteen he should study the Torah
[namely the Pentateuch] with understanding of the [Hebrew] language and
the plain sense of the [biblical] text, as well as the twenty-four books,
without putting any commentator in front of his eyes, but interpreting the
plain sense of the text alone, because it [namely study] stabilizes the text in
accordance with the foundation of the language that is most common
among the populace. And he will accustom himself to write a subtle writing
[calligraphy] and a square one, and the concise artificial grammar that is in
use, together with knowledge of the accustomed number by heart, and the
Mishnah with Maimonides' commentary.
He should also be accustomed for [the next] seven years to study every
week, four days a week, three hours early in the morning, ten [talmudic]
tracts with commentaries, and the Tosofbt, and three legal authorities
[Poseqim]. From the order of Zera'yim, the tract Berakhot; from the order of
Mo'ed, the tracts Sabbath, Pesahin, and Yom Tou; from the order of Neziqim, the
tracts Babba' Metziy'a and Sanhedrin; from the order of Nashim, [the tracts]
Ketubbot and Gittin; from the order of Qiddushin, the tract Hullin; from [the
order of] Tehorot, the [tract] Niddah. And the legal authorities are Rav 'Alfasi,
and Yisaiah the last, and the Asheri. 4 During these mentioned seven years he
should accustom himself to study during the evening in the [field of] the art
of language, [the book] Mildilol by [David] Qimhi, and those of 'Efodi 5 and
of Immanuel, and Aristotle's art of rhetoric, and that of [Yehudah] Messer
Leon, 6 and that of the prophets, with the practice 7 of languages customary in
his days, 8 in books and rhetorics. And Aristotle's art of logic, together with
•341-
Appendix 3
the commentary on the translation of [Yehudah] Messer Leon, and what is
necessary from [the commentaries of] Averroes and of [Joseph ibn] Kaspi.
And during the days of [the months of] Nisan and Tishrei, [approximately]
three months in [each of] these years, when he does not study the Talmud or
Poseqim, he should be preoccupied evening, morning, and noon by the
science of numbers by Gersonides and [Abraham] ibn Ezra and the practice
found with us, and Euclid's science of geometry, and that of Ibn Ezra.
And after mastery of the art of logic, he should read during the evening in
the science of astronomy [Claudius] Ptolemaeus's Almagest, 9 and that of
Averroes, 10 and Tzurat ha-'Aretz, 11 and Al-Fargani, 12 and the art of the sphere
and the astrolabe and the Qadran, together with [the books] Hashav
ha-'Efod, 13 and Yesod '01am,' 4 and Sefer ha-Nasiy', 15 together with the [astro-
nomical] Tables that are common.
Also during the other [namely next] seven years, whoever dedicates him-
self early in the morning to inquire into wisdom should read Aristotle's books
Physics and Metaphysics, and Averroes' Abridgments, and De'ot ha-Filosojim by R.
Samuel ibn Tibbon;' 6 and in the evening of these days [he should read] the
political philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, and of Abuhamed [al-Ghazzali] , 17
and of [Solomon ibn] Gabirol. 18 In the same years after [reading] them, if he
has dedicated himself to conjunction [deuequt], he should read Averroes'
Possibility of Conjunction, 19 and Abu Bakr's Quality of Conjunction, 20 and Abu-
Hamed's Scales ojTnquiries. And during the days of Nisan and Tishrei during
these seven years he should read the science of medicine of Avicenna, and
the Healing of the Body, 21 and the Tzedat ha-Derakhim, 22 and the Treasury of
Leaues, 23 and the books on alchemy 24 by the philosophers called Turban [sic]
Philosophorum, 25 and he should learn the artisanships of Halenbicum [alembic]
and the composition of medicines and the acquaintance with poisons and the
special qualities, the individual and the composite ones. 26
Over the next seven years, whoever has dedicated himself to inquiry into
religion should read in the morning the Intention erf the Philosophers 27 with
Narboni's commentary, and Isaac Albalag, 28 and the [book] Incoherence, 29
and Averroes' Incoherence of the Incoherence, and the Kuzari, 30 and 'Emunah
Ramah, 31 and the Guide [of 'the Perplexed], with the commentaries of Narboni,
and Joseph, 32 and [Shem Tov] Falaquera, 33 and Ephod[y], and the Light of
God, 34 and the 'Iqqarim, 35 and Joseph Caspi's books, and the books of Ibn
Shem Tov, 36 and the Account of Genesis and the Account of Merkauah by R
Yehudah [Romano], 37 and Liwyat Hen. 38 And during the evening [he should
study] the commentaries on the Torah by Rashy, and Nahmanides, and
[Abraham] ibn Ezra, and Gersonides. And during the days of Nisan and
•342-
Alemanno's Study Program
Tishrei, whoever has dedicated himself to the roots of the Kabbalah 39
[should study] that which is understood by reason, 40 such as the Roots of
Falaquera, 41 and the five chapters of R. Joseph Dagaph, 42 and the seven books
of Latif, 4 * and Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut, 44 and [Menahem] Recanati, and the book
Yetzirah with its proper commentaries, 45 which are extant, and [Abraham]
Abulafia's books. 46 And whoever dedicates himself to the science of spiritu-
ality 47 should read Sefer Raziel, which is translated from the Christian [lan-
guage] , and the Intellectual Art, 48 and Takhlit ha-Hakham [Picatrix] , 45 and Plato's
Tahabbulot, 50 and Sefer ha-Tamar, 51 and the Almandel, 52 and Sefer ha-'Atzamim,"
and a Christian book On Agriculture, authored by [Petrus de] Crescentiis. 54
Thus we have here some basic areas of study: the Bible and Hebrew earlier;
followed by rabbinic studies, a variety of philosophical studies, astronomy,
mathematics, and alchemy; then Kabbalah and finally books on magic, all of the
latter translated — as Alemanno was well aware — from other languages. The joint
presentation of Kabbalah and magic as the peak of human studies, which I assume
Alemanno formulated in the 1470s, is reminiscent of Pico della Mirandola's later
association of these two fields at the end of his Theses as the best way to prove the
truth of Christianity.
•343-
APPENDIX 4
Magic Temples and Cities in
the Middle Ages and Renaissance:
Mas'udi, Ibn Zarza, Alemanno
One of the most important achievements of Frances A. Yates's study of Giordano
Bruno is her insightful discussion of the impact of both the Corpus Hermeticum and
Picatrix on Tommaso Campanula's conception of the Cittd del Sole. 1 Her compari-
son of the description of the City of Adocentyn in Picatrix with Campanula's ideal
City of the Sun demonstrates that in both cases there were magic-oriented struc-
tures that aimed at preserving favorable astral influences. 2 Because the passage
from Picatrix quoted by Yates is her only proof of the knowledge of an ideal magic
city in the Renaissance period, 3 it seems worthwhile to expand the evidence by
drawing attention to a description of a magical temple found in Yohanan
Alemanno's Sha'ar ha-Hesheq, which is a printed part of his commentary on the
Song of Songs, Hesheq Shlomo, extant in manuscripts. In the introduction he quotes
•344-
Magic Temples and Cities
a passage that may have as its first source the tenth-century historiographer Abu
al-Hasan 'Ali al-Mas'udi's book Muruj al-Dhahab (Meadows of Gold), mediated by
the fourteenth-century Castilian thinker R. Shmuel ibn Zarza: 4
We have seen in the book of the ancients 5 wonderful things that they did in
their days out of their great desire to make a shape of the superior world and
its wonders below on earth. They said that Jafet the son of Noah had built a
wondrous temple at the borders of China, 6 which is in the uttermost East.
On its construction is written that there were seven windows; at each
window there were standing statues 7 representing the forms of each of the
seven planets. Each statue was made of a stone related to that planet and
corresponding to its color — the color 8 gold for the sun, white for the moon,
black for Saturn, red for Mars, green for Jupiter, blue for Venus, and one
composed of various colors for Mercury. And he [Jafet] had designed in that
temple many forms, and from them every wise man could understand the
nature of the superior forms: 9 how the lower bodies adhere to the superior
and whatever comes into being out of their, namely the superior bodies',
movements, their influences, and their sparks, 10 and other, similar things. 11
And I have heard with my own ears what was related by a Greek, who had
traveled from the beginning of the world to its end and who did not read or
study, and he told us that he had been to a temple similar to that in China.
We investigated and interrogated him in order to be sure in our hearts of the
sayings of the wise and their allusions, which though they appear vain in
the eyes of the multitude, which has not seen the light of the intellect
['or ha-sekhel], these things are wonderful things. 12
This passage, including the description of the miraculous temple and the inter-
rogation of the Greek traveler, is clear evidence of a particular interest in the rela-
tionship between architecture and magic. This concern with magical buildings is
part of a larger conception in Alemanno, which we saw in chapter 14, that the
whole Jewish tradition shows the way by which to draw down the influences that
stem from the world of the sefirot. A large part of this view is expounded in an
imaginary dialogue with a philosopher concerning the temple of Solomon, of
which the passage above forms a part. A few pages later, still in the imaginary
dialogue, Alemanno writes:
Perhaps you will say to me: What is this dream that you entertain about the
preparations hidden from the eyes of the philosophers, who neither know nor
understand what these [preparations] mean to you? For they say: "Let us come
to wisdom and [intellectual] union only byway of intellectual speculation or
•345-
Appendix 4
by sudden intuition, 13 but not by magical actions and buildings, vessels,
prayers, vain things, and many dreams, things that are baseless in the eyes of
the philosophers, the men of intellect and reason." 14
Alemanno's answer is:
[But] all the things that we said are the words of the ancients, who knew the
nature of existing beings, the relations among them, how they are linked
with one another, and how to prepare a vessel for reception of the influence
of the superior bodies. This was obvious to them as a result of [their] wis-
dom and experience, just as to the cultivators of the land ['ouedei ha-'adamah] I5
the preparations of [ha-hakhanot] the plants and the seeds and the soils are
obvious, so that they will receive the propitious influx that is flowering there.
And just as it would be strange for someone who does not know the manner
of cultivation and plowing and planting and grafting that produce things in
such a way, it would be strange in our eyes if we did not see the light ['or
'otam ha-hakhanot] of the preparations so that the divine light and His good-
ness and mercy will be born in us that the powers and sefirot will receive and
emanate. And if you have studied or subscribed to the preparations of the
masters of the forms 16 and secondary natures and the contrivances [tahab-
bulot] 17 of nature, your spirit will not be confused by anything I have told you,
because it is holy. 18
Thus, the philosopher characterizes as dreams the techniques — all of them
futile, in his opinion — used to achieve wisdom and intellectual union with the
spiritual world. In Alemanno, dreaming is conceived of not only as an eminently
passive state of consciousness, a moment when God or other supernal beings visit
men in order to inform them about the future, but also as the expected effect of
meticulous preparations that may induce a revelation during sleep. The astral
nature of all these techniques, including dreams, is explicit. Moreover, this
approach is presented as an ancient wisdom, in the vein of the prisca theologia of
Alemanno's Christian contemporaries in Florence.
The question should be asked: Who were those unnamed ancient masters who
used astromagical techniques or preparations — a term dear to Alemanno, and
stemming from astromagic — and, at the same time, who is the anonymous
philosopher who derides their practices? Let us have a look in a classic of Jewish
philosophy:
And they built temples, set up the statues in them, and thought that the
forces of the planets overflowed toward these statues and that consequently
these statues talked, had understanding, gave prophetic revelation to
• 34 6-
Magic Temples and Cities
people — I mean the statues — and made known to people what was useful to
them. Similarly they said of the trees, which were assigned to the various
planets , that when one particular tree was set apart for one particular planet,
planted with a view to the latter, and a certain treatment was applied to it and
with it, the spirit of the planet overflowed toward that tree, gave prophetic
revelation to people, and spoke to them in sleep. 19
The author of this passage is no other than the famous Maimonides. Who were
those people whom Maimonides describes as cultivating the astromagical cult of
the statues, so similar to the scenario presented by Alemanno in such a positive
light? They are no other than the idolatrous Sabeans, whom Maimonides criticizes
fiercely in both the Mishneh Torah and the Guide of the Perplexed. In other words,
Alemanno presents positively a cult that involves dreams induced by an astromag-
ical practice strongly opposed by Maimonides. Is Maimonides the philosopher
who derides the astromagical cult? If this is the answer, and it seems to me that
this is indeed the case, we see here in Alemanno's text one of the few refutations of
Maimonides' critique of Sabeanism. Alemanno's discussion emphasizes a form of
spirituality that Maimonides and most of his followers emphatically rejected. The
discussions in the passages above represent a debate between the astromagic of
R. Abraham ibn Ezra and his many followers, including Ibn Zarza, and the
Maimonideans. Alemanno is certainly taking the side of the Ibn Ezra party, which
is also closer to that of most Kabbalists. In the same years when the Hermetic
literature, and some Neoplatonic type of magic found among Neoplatonists like
Iamblichus, both translated by Marsilio Ficino, made their ways to the center of
one of the most influential circles in the Italian Renaissance, similar ideas were
moving to the center of the thought of Alemanno, who chose this somewhat
Hermetic stand over that of its great critic, the medieval Maimonides. Thus a
parallel development took place among thinkers who were in contact, and it will
be interesting to pursue this concomitance in further research.
Another attribution to the ancients of the relationship between architecture
and magic appears in the long version of the Book of Josiphon, a tenth-century
southern Italian book of Jewish history that was printed in Venice in 1544. 2 ° It, too,
contains a description of a magic city:
It is reported that Alexander of Macedon found an isle on which there was
the grave of an ancient king, whose name was Keinan the son of Enos, who
ruled before the flood over the whole world. He was wise and understood
the sciences and ruled over the spirits, the demons, and the maleficent spir-
its, and he built on the isle a great city 21 surrounded by a wall and built there
a great courtyard of marble, and there he stored a great number of precious
•347-
Appendix 4
stones and gems and treasures of gold and silver. And there he also built a
tower over his grave in order to preserve his memory. Because it was built
according to the science of the seven planets and according to the art of
magic, no one could enter the city, since whoever reached the walls died on
the spot."
Thus we seem to have in Hebrew writings the earliest Renaissance texts linking
magic with architecture. Alemanno mentions explicitly the art of magic, the seven
planets, and the tower, which probably reflects the earlier mention of a pagoda.
These accounts were followed at the beginning of the seventeenth century by an
encyclopedic work written in Hebrew, attesting that the Florentine duke Cosimo
de' Medici "established laurel woods as walls of the city that he built in Romania,
which was named the City of the Sun." 23 This statement describes the City of the
Sun as a fact, and it basically agrees with the diary of the librarian of the Abbey of
St. Victor, reporting that "Jordanus told me that he knew nothing of the town built
by the Duke of Florence where only Latin would be spoken, but he has heard it said
that this duke wished to build a Ciuitas Solis, on which the sun would shine every
day of the year as it does on other cities such as Rome and Rhodes." 24
Both the encyclopedia's and the librarian's testimony indicate that such a city
had been built before the end of the sixteenth century. 25 The city was built by a
Florentine who could have been aware of the possibilities inherent in a construc-
tion in accordance with the laws of magic, since such a conception had already
been elaborated in Picatrix and in Alemanno at the end of the fifteenth and the
beginning of the sixteenth centuries. 26 To make it more explicit: it is possible that
the term "Sun" in the phrase "the City of the Sun" is related to some form of astro-
magic, in the manner mentioned in the text translated above from Ibn Zarza and
Alemanno.
It is plausible to assume a combined influence of astromagical material, trans-
lated and available in medieval Spain, on the Renaissance: both Picatrix and
Mas'udi's texts on the magical cities reached Florence and were known by both
Pico and Ficino. Although Picatrix was available in Latin, to my best knowledge Ibn
Zarza was not, and the fact that Alemanno was acquainted with and impressed by
his thought makes the Italian Kabbalist a plausible mediator between the Hebrew
original of Ibn Zarza and Ficino.
• 34 8-
NOTES
Introduction
i. For some different definitions of Kabbalah see Scholem, Kabbalah, pp. 3-7; Idel,
"Defining Kabbalah"; idem, "On the Meanings of the Term 'Kabbalah,' " pp. 69-73.
2. See, e.g., Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead, trans. J. Neugroschel
and J. Chipman (Schocken, New York, 1991), pp. 88-139, 140-196.
3. See, e.g., Idel, Golem.
4. See Idel, Enchanted Chains.
5. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 82-83.
6. For more on these models and the conjunctions between them see Idel, Hasidism,
pp. 45-145; and more recently idem, "Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish
Mysticism," in Sabbath: Idea, History, Reality, ed. Gerald Blidstein (Ben Gurion
•349-
Notes to Pages 4-8
University Press, Beer Sheva, 2004), pp. 57-93, citing additional studies dealing with
the three models. See also app. 2 in this volume.
7. For the need to distinguish among different layers as portents of different structures
of kabbalistic knowledge see M. Idel, "Kabbalah and Elites in Thirteenth-Century
Spain," Mediterranean Historical Review 9 (1994), pp. 5-19; idem, "Transmission in the
Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah," in Transmitting Jeivish Traditions: Oralittj, Textuality, and
Cultural Diffusion, ed. Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni (Yale University Press, New
Haven, 2000), pp. 138-164; and idem, Messianic Mystics, pp. 265-269.
8. Ta'atn Zeqenitn (Frankfurt am Main, 1855), fol. 54b.
9. Ibid., fol. 56a.
10. See Scholem, Reshit ha-Qabbalah, p. 203.
n. See BT, Ha,gigah, fol. 15b. For the latest scholarly survey of this legend see Maria E.
Subtleny, "The Tale of the Four Sages who Entered 'Pardes': A Talmudic Enigma from
a Persian Perspective," Jewish Studies Quarterly 11 (2004), pp. 3-58.
12. R. Nathan ben Yehi'el, Arukh ha-Shalem, ed. A. Kohut, vol. 1 (Grab, 1878), p. 14, s.v.
'avnei shayish tailor. See also Idel, Kabbalah: Neiv Perspectives, pp. 90-91; idem, Ascensions
on High, pp. 33-34; Assi Farber-Ginat, "Inquiries in Shi'ur Qomah," in Massu'ot: Studies
in Kabbalistic Literature and Jeivish Philosophy in Memory of Professor Ephraim Gottlieb, ed.
Michal Oron and Amos Goldreich (Mossad Bialik, Jerusalem, 1994), p. 374 n. 70
(Hebrew); and Wolfson, Through a Speculum, pp. 146-147. On the background of
R. Nathan of Rome see Israel M. Ta-Shma, "II contesto italiano des Sefer he- Arukh di
Rabbi Natan den Yechi'el da Roma," La rasse^na di Israel 67 (2001) = Minchat Yehuda:
Sacjtji sull' ebraismo italiano in memoria di Yehuda Nello Pavoncello, ed. Angelo Piatelli and
Myriam Silvera, pp. 21-26 (Hebrew).
13. Nathan ben Yehi'el, Arukh ha-Shalem, p. 14.
14. See Colette Sirat, Les theories des visions surnaturelles (Brill, Leiden, 1964), pp. 33-35;
Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 1: 198 n. 2 and 199-200. See also ibid., p. 202, for the phrase
ba-sekhel libam, "the understanding of their heart"; and David Halperin, "Origen,
Ezekiel's Merkavah, and the Ascension of Moses," Church History 50 (1981), pp. 263
and 273-274. The occurrence of the phrases cordis oculis in Origen and binat Ievavkhem
in Hebrew texts may evidence a psychological interpretation of the vision of the super-
nal chariot, called Merkavah in ancient Jewish sources; see also Halperin, The Merkavah
in Rabbinic Literature (American Oriental Society, New Haven, 1980), pp. 174-175;
Wolfson, Through a Speculum, pp. 147-148; Adena Tanenbaum, The Contemplative Soul:
Hebreiv Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain (Brill, Leiden, 2002), pp. 77-79
and 190. On the great impact of Rav Hai Gaon in Italy see also Avraham Grossman, The
Early Sages of France (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 89-90 n. 25 (Hebrew).
15. See Scholem, Major Trends, p. 29, where he mentions Macarius the Egyptian, who in
the fourth century interpreted the vision of Ezekiel as a vision of "the secret of the
soul."
16. Megillat Ahima'atz ben Paltiel, ed. Benjamin Klar (Tarshish, Jerusalem, 1974) (Hebrew),
p. 30. For an Italian translation of the chronicle see Sejer Yuhasin: Libro delle discendenze,
•350-
Notes to Pages 8-g
uicende di una Jamiglia ebraka di Oria nei secoli IX-XI, Ahima'az ben Paltiel, ed. Cesare
Colafemmina (Messaggi, Cassano delle Murge, Bari, 2001).
17. Megillat Ahima'atz ben Paltiel, p. 12.
18. See R. Tzidqiah ben Abraham, Shibbolei ha-Leqet, ed. Shmuel K. Mirsl<y (Sura, New
York, 1966), p. 194. See also the use of the term merkavah to refer to Heikhalot material
in Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 4: 173.
19. Tzidqiah ben Abraham, Shibbolei ha-Leqet, p. 183. See also the bibliography in Ephraim
Kanarfogel, "Mysticism and Asceticism in Italian Rabbinic Literature of the Thirteenth
Century," Kabbalah 6 (2001), p. 139 nn. 15-16 (Hebrew).
20. See Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 41, 46, 84; Dan, The Esoteric Theology, pp. 18-20; Roberto
Bonfil, "Tra due mondi: Prospettive di ricerca sulla storia culturale degli ebrei
nell'Italia meridionale nell'AIto Medioevo," Italia Judaica 1 (1983), p. 149 n. 54; Israel
Weinstock, "The Discovery of Abu Aharon of Baghdad's Legacy of Secrets," Tarbitz 32
(1963), pp. 153-159 (Hebrew); Gershom Scholem, "Has Abu Aharon's Legacy of
Secrets Been Discovered?," ibid., pp. 252-265 (Hebrew); and Weinstock's rejoinder,
"The Treasury of 'Secrets' of Abu Aharon — Imagination or Reality?," Sinai 54 (1964),
pp. 226-259 (Hebrew); Daniel Abrams, "The Literary Emergence of Esotericism in
German Pietism," Shojar 12 (1994), p. 68; Sara Tzfatman, The Jewish Tale in the Middle
Ages: Between Ashlcenaz and Sefarad (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1993), pp. 139-142 and
146-148 (Hebrew); and, more recently, Dan, The "Unique Cherub" Circle, pp. 210-212.
21. This term recurs in Ashkenazi discussions of the prayer, and I have translated it as
seems to me most appropriate. See also tiqqun tejilot at the beginning of the genealogy
in Dan, The Esoteric Theology, p. 15.
22. Namely sin. See Megillat Ahima'atz ben Paltiel, pp. 12-13.
23. On new information regarding this Rabbi Moshe see Avraham Grossman, The Early
Sages oJAshkenaz: Their Liues, Leadership, and Works (goo-iog 6) (Magnes Press, Jerusalem,
1981), pp. 33-34 (Hebrew).
24. See the sources for this passage in Dan, The Esoteric Theology, pp. 15-16, especially n. 2.
This is one of two versions. The historical background of this story is dealt with in
detail in Grossman, The Early Sages of Ashlcenaz, pp. 29-44, where the texts and perti-
nent bibliography are provided. For the extant poems of R. Moshe ben Qalonymos,
see Abraham M. Habermann, ed., Liturgical Poems of R Shim'on bar Yishaq with
an Appendix, Liturgical Poems of R Moshe bar Kalonymos (Schocken, Berlin, 1938),
pp. 192-218.
25. See especially Dan, The Esoteric Theology, pp. 14-20, and Grossman, The Early Sages of
Ashlcenaz, pp. 29-44.
26. On this issue I shall elaborate elsewhere.
27. See Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 4: 14-15; and the extensive analyses of Grossman, The
Early Sages of Ashlcenaz, especially pp. 348-357.
28. Megillat Ahima'atz ben Paltiel, pp. 15, 21.
29. For an important analysis of the mythical structure of 'Ahima'atz's chronicle see
Robert Bonfil, "Myth, Rhetoric, History? A Study in the Chronicle of 'Ahima'atz," in
•351-
Notes to Pages 9-10
Culture and Society in Medieual Jewry: Studies Dedicated to the Memory oJHaim Hillel ben
Sasson, ed. Menahem ben Sasson, Robert Bonfil, and Joseph R. Hacker (Zalman Shazar
Center, Jerusalem, 1989), pp. 99-135 (Hebrew), including the pertinent bibliography;
and now Robert Bonfil, History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish Chronicle: The Family
Chronicle oj/Ahima'az Ben Paltiel (Brill, Leiden, 2009).
30. See, e.g., the poems of R. 'Amittai ben Shefatyah, in Megillat 'Ahima'atz ben Paltiel,
pp. 79-80, 81-82, discussed in detail in app. 1. On the move of southern Italian poetry
to Ashkenaz see Ezra Fleischer, The Yozer: Its Emergence and Development (Magnes Press,
Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 607-626, 660-672 (Hebrew).
31. See Hugo Odeberg's introduction to 3 Enoch, or The Hebrew Enoch (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1928), p. 28; Robert Bonfil, "The Cultural and Religious Traditions
of French Jewry in the Ninth Century as Reflected in the Writings of Agobard of Lyon,"
in Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby, ed.
J. Dan and J. Hacker (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1986), pp. 327-348 (Hebrew); Ephraim
Kanarfogel, "Peering through the Lattices": Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the
TosaJJst Period (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 2000), pp. 27-28; Moshe Idel,
"The Evil Thought of the Deity," Tarbitz 49 (1980), pp. 356-357 (Hebrew).
32. Megillat Ahima'atz ben Paltiel, p. 12. See also Klar's discussion, ibid., p. 120. For the
importance of the root BYN, "to understand in a profound manner," in the history of
the terminology of Jewish mysticism see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 209-215. For the
description of R. Shefatiah, the father of 'Amittai, as dealing with secrets of the super-
nal world see Megillat Ahima'atz, p. 29, and also p. 35 on R. Paltiel as meuin sodot, "under-
stands secrets profoundly." The emphasis on the root BYN is obvious also in ibid., p. 38,
verses 15-16. Especially interesting is the claim of R. 'Ahima'atz himself, that he wished
to understand the secrets of the Torah, ibid., p. 40. These descriptions are intertwined
with the assumption that the sons of R. 'Amittai are "poets" and "compose rhymes."
For the affinity between knowledge of secrets and poetry in connection with the ancient
Ashkenazi masters see Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 4:6,73; and Kanarfogel, "Peering through
the Lattices", p. 131 n. 1. The combination of esoteric knowledge with an exoteric one by
elite founding figures is known also in the case of early Kabbalah, R. Abraham ben
David (Rabad) and R. Jacob the Nazarite of Lunel in Provence, and some of the leaders
of Hasidei Ashkenaz. According to a later testimony, both R 'Amittai and R. Shefatiyah
were described as ba'alei shem, "masters of the (divine) name," a term that became
widespread later in the Middle Ages. See Megillat Ahima'atz ben Paltiel, p. 47.
33. See Idel, Ascensions on High, pp. 35-36.
34. Ibid., p. 63 n. 59.
35. Kanarfogel, "Mysticism and Asceticism," pp. 148-149.
36. Ibid., p. 149.
37. See Israel M. Ta-Shma, "R. Jesaiah di Trani the Elder and His Connections with
Byzantium and Palestine," Shalem 4 (1984), p. 411 (Hebrew).
38. See Kanarfogel, "Peering through the Lattices," p. 244 n. 67; and Idel, "Some Forlorn
Writings." As we shall see in chap. 7, some of the writings of R. Nehemiah the prophet
•352-
Notes to Pages 10-12
were presumably known in the early 1280s in Rome, and had an impact on Abraham
Abulafia. See also app. 1 in this volume on Nehemiah and prophecy.
39. Idel, "Between," pp. 79-95.
40. For Abraham Abulafia see, e.g., hisSheva'Netivotha-Torah,p. 21. ForRecanati, see Idel,
R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 119-120. For Alemanno's use of this literature in one of his
treatises see Klaus Herrmann, "The Reception of Heikhalot Literature in Yohanan
Alemanno's Autograph MS Paris 849," in Studies in Jewish Manuscripts, ed. Joseph
Dan and Klaus Herrmann (J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 1999}, pp. 9-88; and more in the
material cited below, chap. 16, note 4.
41. See Rabbenu Tarn, Sefer ha-Yashar, ed. Shraga Rosenthal (Berlin, 1898), no. 46, p. 90, the
answer of Rabbenu Tarn to R. Meshullam. See also Tzfatman, Thejeurish Tale, pp. 132-133 .
42. See his studies mentioned in Tzfatman, The Jeurish Tale, p. 130 n. 137. The famous
legend about the four captives who founded Jewish centers in Europe situates the
starting point of this adventure in Bari.
43. J. B. Sermoneta, "II neo-platonismo nel pensiero dei nuclei ebraici stanziati
nell'Occidente latino (rifflesioni sul 'Commento al Libro della Creazione' di Rabbi
Sabbetai Donnolo)," Gli Ebrei nell'alto Medievo 2 (1980), pp. 883-887. In more general
terms see Andrew Sharf, The Universe of Sabbetai Donnolo (Ktav, New York, 1976).
44. Elliot R Wolfson, "The Theosophy of Sabbetai Donnolo, with Special Emphasis on
the Doctrine ofSefirotin His Sefer Hakhmoni," Jeurish History 6 (1992), pp. 281-316; idem,
Through a Speculum, pp. 127-144.
45. See Wolfson, Through a Speculum, pp. 141-142.
46. M. Idel, "On the Doctrine of Divinity at the Beginning of Kabbalah," in Shefa Tal:
Studies in Jeurish Thought and Culture Presented to Bracha Sack, ed. Z. Gries, Ch. Kreisel, and
B. Huss (Ben Gurion University Press, Beer Sheva, 2004), pp. 131-148 (Hebrew);
and idem, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 239-243.
47. See Zev ben Hayyim, ed. and trans., "On the Twenty-two Letters," in Tibat Marqe:
A Collection of Samaritan Midrashim (Israeli Academy for Sciences and Humanities,
Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 358-359 (Hebrew). The term for Glory is Yeqarah. The term
"Glory," as well as the number ten, recurs also elsewhere in this late-antique treatise.
See, e.g., ibid., pp. 348-348 and 350-351.
48. See Isaac E. Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith: Anti-Rationalism in Jewish Italian Thought,
1250-1650 (Mouton, The Hague, 1967), pp. 19-32; Giuseppe B. Sermoneta, "Federico
II e il pensiero ebraico nell'Italia del suo tempo," in Federico II e 1'arte del Duecento italiano:
Am' della III settimana di studi di storia dell'arte medieuale dell'universitd di Roma, vol. 2
(Galatina Congedo Editore, Lecce, 1980), pp. 183-197; and Colette Sirat, La philosophic
juiue medieuale en pays de chre'tiente' (Presses du Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, Paris, 1988), pp. 33-34.
49. Thirteenth-century Italian commentaries on the Guide ojthe Perplexed were written by
R. Moshe of Salerno, R. Zerahyah Hen, and R. Abraham Abulafia. R Hillel of Verona
discussed issues found in the Guide in his writings and letters.
50. Introduction, Malmad ha-Talmidim (Elk, 1866), unpaginated.
•353-
Notes to Pages 12-13
51. See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 49-54. Nevertheless Anatoli's transla-
tion of Averroes' commentary on Aristotle's De Interpretation did have an impact on a
Kabbalist like Abraham Abulafia. See ibid., pp. 12-13.
52. Colette Sirat, "Juda b. Salomon Ha-Kohen — philosophe, astronome et peut-etre
kabbalistede la premiere moitieduXIIIesiecle," Italia 1:2 (1979), p. 48 n. 21. For more
on this figure see Sirat, La philosophiejuiue, pp. 62-71, especially pp. 68-69.
53. For more on his views see chap. 12.
54. On Hillel's more moderate attitude and Zerahyah's and Abulafia's more extreme and
critical one toward Frederick IPs alleged attempt to discover, by experimentation with
infants, what the first language was, see app. 2.
55. See Joseph B. Sermoneta, "Una transcrizione in caratteri ebraici di alcuni brani
filosofici della Divina Commedia," in Romanica et Occidentalia: Etudes de'die'es a la me'moire de
H. Peri, ed. Moshe Lazar (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1963), pp. 29, 33.
56. See Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 422-423, 425, 428-430, 439; Gabrielle
Sed-Rajna, "L'influence de Jean Scot sur la doctrine du Kabbalist Azriel de Gerone," in
R. Roques, ed., Jean ScotErujene et 1'histoire de la philosophic (Presses du Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, 1977), pp. 453-462; Shlomo Pines, "Nahmanides
on Adam in the Garden of Eden in the Context of Other Interpretations of Genesis,
Chapters 2 and 3," in Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of Jewish People Presented to
Projessor H. Beinart, ed. A. Mirsky, A. Grossman, and Y. Kaplan (Makhon Ben Zvi,
Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 159-164 (Hebrew); Amos Funkenstein, "Nahmanides'
Symbolical Reading of History," in Studies in Jewish Mysticism, ed. J. Dan and F. Talmage
(Association of Jewish Studies, Cambridge, Mass., 1982), pp. 129-150; and Mark
Sendor, "The Emergence of Provencal Kabbalah: R. Isaak the Blind's Commentary on
Sefer Yezirah," vol. 1 (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1994), pp. 115-116, 377. On
whether the more recent scholarly focus on possible historical affinities between the
concept of the Shekhinah in the Boole o/Bahir and the worship of Mary in the Latin West
is the best explanation for understanding the concept of the Shekhinah I have my res-
ervations; see Peter Schaefer, Mirror o/His Beauty (Princeton University Press, Princeton,
2003), pp. 147-216; Arthur Green, Keter: The Croum of God in Early Jewish Mysticism
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997), pp. 160-161 n. 35; and idem,
"Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs: Reflections on a Kabbalistic
Symbol in Its Christian Context," AJS Review 26 (2002), pp. 1-52. Cf. Idel, Kabbalah and
Eros, pp. 28-42, 45-52; and idem, Ben, pp. 377-399. For the pertinence of comparison
of Abulafia's sevenfold exegetical system with the seven stages of St. Bonaventura's
ascent of the mind to God see Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 82-83.
57. Giuseppe B. Sermoneta, "Dall'ebraico in latino e dal latino in ebraico: Tradizione
scolastica e metodica della traduzione," in Rencontres de cultures dans la philosophic
me'dieuale, ed. J. Hamesse and M. Fattori (Casino, Louvain, 1990), pp. 149-165.
58. See Sermoneta, "Una transcrizione in caratteri ebraici," pp. 30-31 n. 21.
59. See R. Elnathan ben Moshe Qalqish of Constantinopole, Sefer 'Euen Sappir, Ms. Paris,
BN 728, fol. 179a.
•354-
Notes to Pages 13-15
60. See Idel, Enchanted Chains, pp. 190-196.
61. See Sermoneta, "Una transcrizione in caratteri ebraici."
62. On the relations between the two see Umberto Cassuto, Dante e Manoello (Florence,
1922); and, more recendy, Giorgio Battistoni, Immanuello Romano: L'Inferno e il Paradiso
(Giuntina, Florence, 2000), pp. xi-xxii. On the reladonship between Jews and
Christians in Italy in the Middle Ages see also the bibliography below, chap. 7, note 56.
63 . See Joseph Dan, "Ashkenazi Hasidism and the Maimonidean Controversy, "Maimonidean
Studies 3 (1992-93), pp. 29-47. None of the following studies deals with substantial
controversies in Italy: Daniel J. Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean
Controversy (Brill, Leiden, 1965); Joseph Sarachek, Faith and Reason: The Conflict ouer the
Rationalism of Maimonides (New York, 1935); Bernard D. Septimus, Hispano-Jeurish Culture
in Transition: The Career and Controuersies of Ramah (Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Mass., 1982); Charles Touati, Prophetes, Talmudistes, Philosophes (Le Cerf, Paris, 1990),
pp. 201-218; idem, "Les deux conflits autour de Maimonide," in Juifs etjudaisme de
Languedoque, ed. M. Vicaire and B. Blumenkranz (E. Privat, Toulouse, 1977), pp. 173-184;
Azriel Shohat, "Concerning the First Controversy on the Writings of Maimonides," Zion
36:1-2 (1971), pp. 27-60 (Hebrew); Sarah Stroumsa, "Twelfth-Century Concepts of Soul
and Body: The Maimonidean Controversy in Baghdad," in Self, Soul, and Body in Religious
Experience, ed. Albert I. Baumgarten, Jan Assmann, and Guy G. Stroumsa (Brill, Leiden,
1998), pp. 313-334; and idem, The Beginnings of the Maimonidean Controversy in the East
(Ben Tzvi Institute, Jerusalem, 1999) (Hebrew).
64. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 58-60.
65. On this issue see more in Concluding Remarks.
66. See chap. 21 and app. 4.
67. See, for example, Nemesius of Emessa, John of Damascus, and Shahrastani, cited by
Harry A. Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, ed. I. Twersky and
G. H. Williams, vol. 1 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1973), p. 357;
Sa'id al-Andalusi, Tabaqat al-umam, trans. G. Blachere (Larose, Paris, 1935),
pp. 57-62; and Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (Routledge, London,
1975), p. 40. See also Isidore Levy, La legende de Pythatjore de Grece en Palestine (E. Champion,
Paris, 1927); and Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, pp. 12 n. 40, 53-54.
68. See Idel, "On the Meanings of the Term 'Kabbalah,'" pp. 50-51. Eusebius's quote
from Numenius's lost Boole ojthe Good in Praeparatio Euangelica IX.7, a first and very
important religious concordance, was explicitly quoted in connection with Pythagoras
by several Jewish authors in the Renaissance. See R. Gedalyah ben Yehiya, Shalshelet
ha-Qabbalah (Jerusalem, n.d.), p. 237; Yehudah Muscato's commentary on R. Yehudah
ha-Levi's Kuzari, named Qol Yehudah, pt. 2, fol. 76a; Isaac Cardoso, Philosophic libera
(Bertanorum sumptibus, Venice, 1673); cf. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, From Spanish
Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso (University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1981),
pp. 221-222. For Pythagoras in Alemanno see his Sha'ar ha-Hesheq (Halberstadt, i860),
fol. 10a; and his Liqqutim, or Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234 (numbered, like
all subsequent citations of Mss. Bodleiana, according to Catalogue A. Neubauer),
•355-
Notes to Pages 15-17
fols. 10a, 17a, where he deals with matters of psychology. An issue I cannot pursue
here is the reverberation of the association between Pythagoras and metempsychosis
in other sixteenth-century Kabbalists in Safed.
69. See a similar discussion in Reuchlin, On theArtofthe Kabbalah, p. 238. For more on this
issue see the final section of Concluding Remarks.
70. Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, p. 39. See also S. K. Heninger Jr., Touches of Sweet
Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics (Huntington Library, San Marino,
Calif, 1974), p. 245; and Joseph Dan, "The Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin and Its
Historical Significance, "in The Christian Kabbalah: Jeurish Mystical Books and Their Christian
Interpreters, ed. J. Dan (Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Mass., 1997), pp. 59-60.
71. Quoted and translated by Daniel R. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian
Platonism Jrom the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Duckworth, London, 1972), p. 50.
72. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 122, 187, 197-199.
73. Numenius was one of the last major Neopythagoreans. See also below, note 85, the
quotation from Numenius in Flavius Mithridates' Sermo de Passione Domini.
74. On this figure's identity see Idel, "Differing Conceptions," pp. 158-161; and cf. Lelli,
La lettera preziosa, pp. 44-45, 77-79.
75. On Numenius's belief in metempsychosis into animal bodies see John Millon, The
Middle Piatonists (Duckworth, London, 1977), pp. 377-378. Later in the passage R. Elijah
alleges that Numenius stated that he was a reincarnation of Moses. Although Numenius
was indeed an admirer of Moses, I could not trace the origin of this self-evaluation. See
the discussion of Numenius and Moses in John G. Gager, Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism
(Abington Press, Nashville, 1972), pp. 64-68. It is possible that R. Elijah's statement is
a distortion of Numenius's best-known dictum: "What is Plato but Moses speaking
Attic?" (see ibid., pp. 66-67), which occurs several times in Renaissance authors such
as Ficino and Pico. See Trinkaus, In Our Likeness and Image, 2: 741-742.
76. I.e., the fifteenth-century Catalan philosopher R Joseph Albo's Sejer ha-'Iqqarim, pt. 4,
chap. 29, attacking the belief in reincarnation in animal bodies.
77. The concept of transmigration of the soul in animal bodies apparentiy occurs only in
the works of Kabbalists who wrote in the late thirteenth century: R. Joseph of Hamadan,
R. Joseph Ashkenazi, and R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid. Joseph of Hamadan's views
are mentioned and quoted by R Menahem Recanati as part of "the later Kabbalists."
See Alexander Altmann, "SeferTa'amei ha-Mizu;ot Attributed to R. Isaac ibn Farhi and Its
Author," Qiryat Sefer 40 (1965), pp. 256-276, 405-412 (Hebrew); Scholem, On the
Mystical Shape, p. 303 n. 26; Gotdieb, Studies, p. 380; Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 2: chap.
19. The view of R. Joseph Ashkenazi on cosmic or vertical metempsychosis, which was
known to Yohanan Alemanno, was discussed in one of the meetings in Pico's house.
See Scholem, On the Mystical Shape, pp. 227-228, 305 n. 46, 308 n. 75.
78. R. Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of Genazzano, 'Iggeret Hamudot, in Lelli, La lettera
preziosa, pp. 153-154.
79. See Bacchelli, Giovanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto, p. 15 n. 50; and Wirszubski, Pico della
Mirandola, p. 70.
•356-
Notes to Pages 17-18
80. For a bibliography on this influential figure see Wirszubski, Sermo de Passione Domini,
p. 12 n. 2; Shlomo Simonsohn, "Some Well-Known Jewish Converts during the
Renaissance," REJ 148 (1989), pp. 17-26; Angela Scandaliato, "Guglielmo Raimondo
Moncada e il suo background culturale: Un caso siciliano esemplare di interculturalita
tra ebraismo, cristianesimo e islam," in L'interculturalita dell'ebraismo atti del Conuegno
internazionale, Bertinoro-Rauenna, 26-28 maggio 2003, ed. Mauro Perani (Longo Editore,
Ravenna, 2004), pp. 269-285; idem, "Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada alias Flavio
Mitridate, ebreo convertito di Caltabellota," Sefer Yuhasin 18-19 (2002-2003), PP- 3 _ 9-
81. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, p. 70.
82. Ibid., passim; Saverio Campanini, "Pici Mirandulensis bibliotheca cabbalistica latina:
Sulle traduzioni latine di opere cabbalistiche eseguite de Flavio Mitridate per Pico
della Mirandola," Materia Giudaica 7:1 (2002), pp. 90-96; idem, "La radice dolorante:
Ebrei e cristiani alia scoperta del giudaismo nel Rinascimento," in L'interculturalita
dell'ebraismo atti del Conuegno internazionale, Bertinoro-Rauenna, 26-28 magpie 2003, ed.
Mauro Perani (Longo Editore, Ravenna, 2004), pp. 229-255; Michela Andreatta, "La
traduzione latina del 'Cantico dei Cantici' eseguita da Flavio Mitridate per Pico della
Mirandola," Materia Giudaica 8:1 (2003), pp. 177-189; and The Great Parchment: Flauius
Mithridates' Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version, ed. Giulio Busi with
Simonetta M. Bondoni and Saverio Campanini (Nino Aragno Editore, Turin, 2004),
pp. 13-16. See also chap. 15, sec. 3.
83. Wirszubski, Sermo de Passione Domini, p. 49.
84. On this fragment of the Middle Platonist Numenius, who was the closest to Judaism
among all the pagan Platonic thinkers, see Edouard des Places, ed., Numenius,
Fragments (Belles Lettres, Paris, 1973), p. 42.
85. See Wirszubski, Sermo de Passione Domini, p. 101: "Ut Numenius Pythagoricus in volu-
mine de bono scribit, Plato atque Pythagoras quaea Abrahmanes et Iudaei invenerunt
ea ipsi graece exposuerunt." For the ancient source see Eusebius of Caesarea,
Praeparatio Euangelica IX.7; translated as Preparation Jor the Gospel by Edwin H. Gifford,
vol. 1 (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1981), p. 443.
86. Wirszubski, Sermo de Passione Domini, pp. 33-34.
87. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 114-118.
88. See especially the kabbalistic schools of Nahmanides and R David ben Yehudah he-
Hasid; Moshe Idel, "Kabbalistic Material from R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid's
School," Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 2 (1983), pp. 169-207; idem, "Kabbalistic
Prayer and Colors," in Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, ed. David R. Blumenthal,
vol. 3 (Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1988), pp. 17-27; idem, "Kauuanah and Colors: A
Neglected Kabbalistic Responsum," in Tribute to Sarah: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and
Kabbalah Presented to Professor Sarah 0. Heller Wilensky, ed. M. Idel, D. Dimant, and
S. Rosenberg (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1994), pp. 1-14 (Hebrew). See also in this
volume chap. 5 and Concluding Remarks. In more general terms, reflecting also
sixteenth-century developments of Kabbalah in Italy, see Idel, "Particularism and
Universalism."
•357-
Notes to Pages 20-22
Chapter i: Kabbalah
1. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 7-8.
2. For more on the view shared by Baer and Scholem about the intervention of supernal
powers in Jewish history see Moshe Idel, "The Ascent and Decline of the 'Historical
Jew' " (forthcoming) . On the Kabbalah as a particularist lore see now Elliot R. Wolfson,
Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2006).
3. For a critical review of Scholem's overemphasis on the role of messianic Lurianism in
the emergence of Sabbateanism, see Moshe Idel, " 'One from a Town, Two from a
Clan': The Diffusion of Lurianic Kabbalah and Sabbateanism: A Reexamination,"
Pe'amim 44 (1990), pp. 5-30 (Hebrew); English version in Jewish History 7:2 (1993),
pp. 79-104; and Idel, Messianic Mystics, pp. 183-185.
4. Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 45; idem, Origins ojthe Kabbalah, pp. 404-414.
5. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectiues.
6. See Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, pp. 139-161.
7. Alexander Altmann, "Maimonides' Attitude toward Jewish Mysticism," Studies in
Jewish Thought, ed. A. Jospe (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1981), pp. 200-219;
Idel, "Maimonides and Kabbalah," pp. 54-70.
8. Moshe Idel, "Major Currents in Italian Kabbalah between 1560-1660," Italia Judaica 2
(1986), pp. 243-262; reprinted in Ruderman, Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in
Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. D. B. Ruderman (New York University Press, New
York, 1992), pp. 345-368.
9. This strategy started before the emergence of Lurianism. See Idel, "The Magical and
Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 186-242. For later phenomena, see Alexander
Altmann, "Lurianic Kabbalah in a Platonic Key: Abraham Cohen Herrera's Puerto del
Cielo," Hebrew Union College Annual 53 (1982), pp. 321-324; Nissim Yosha, Myth and
Metaphor: Abraham Cohen Herrera's Philosophic Interpretation of Lurianic Kabbalah (Ben Zvi
Institute and Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1994) (Hebrew).
10. See, for the time being, Moshe Idel, "Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi: A New Approach to
Sabbateanism," in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations jrom the Bible to Waco, ed.
Peter Schaefer and Mark Cohen (Brill, Leiden, 1998), pp. 179-180; idem, "On Prophecy
and Magic in Sabbateanism," Kabbalah 8 (2003), pp. 7-10; Matt Goldish, The Sabbatean
Prophets (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2003); and in more general
terms M. Idel, "On European Cultural Renaissances and Jewish Mysticism," Kabbalah
13 (2005), pp. 7-41.
11. See, e.g., Idel, "Defining Kabbalah," pp. 97-99.
12. See Moshe Idel, "On Adolph Jellinek and Kabbalah," Pe'amim 100 (2004), pp. 15-22
(Hebrew).
13. Scholarly awareness of the importance of the Byzantine center of Kabbalah for the
general development of this lore is only now emerging in a significant way. See chap. 22 .
14. Idel, "Defining Kabbalah," pp. 101-103.
•358-
Notes to Pages 23-29
15. See the Ashkenazi tradition translated and analyzed by Ivan G. Marcus, Piety and
Society: The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany (Brill, Leiden, 1981), pp. 67-68; as well as
the discussions in the Introduction and app. 1.
16. See Moshe Idel, "Gazing at the Head in Ashkenazi Hasidism, " Journal qfjeurish Thought
and Philosophy 6 (1997), pp. 265-269.
17. See Scholem, Origins o_f the Kabbalah, pp. 209-211; Moshe Idel, "Kabbalistic Prayer in
Provence," Tarbitz 62 (1993), pp. 265-286 (Hebrew).
18. See Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 35-39, 44, 205-206, 238-243; Daniel
Abrams, ed., R. Asher ben Dauid: His Complete Works and Studies in His Kabbalistic Thought
(Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 1996), p. 39 (Hebrew).
19. This is one of the few occasions when Abulafia explicitly mentions the oral reception
of traditions from some masters. On the reception of esoteric traditions concerning
the secrets of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, see Idel, Maitnonide et la mystique juiue,
p. 39 n. 90. For the Renaissance misunderstanding of the identity of Abulafia's master
as Maimonides himself, see Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 87-88, 91-98.
20. A list of ancient mystical books appears in a similar context in Abulafia's episde Sheua'
Netiuot ha-Torah, p. 21.
21. The manuscript has MHTY, which is meaningless in Hebrew. This may be one of many
copyist's errors in what is unfortunately the only surviving manuscript of this text. If not,
we should read the clause as follows: "which came to me in the form of a Bat Qol [daughter
of the voice]." However, it may be that Abulafia was alluding to the Greek form THY,
namely "god," in which case MTHY would mean "from God." Abulafia already used THYV
to refer to God in his early Sefer Get ha-Shemot; see Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1658, translated
in Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 24. See also app. 2 of this volume.
22. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer ha-Hesheq, Ms. New York, JTS 1801, fol. 4b. Cf. Abulafia, Sheua'
Netiuot ha-Torah, p. 21, where he values the revelation from the Agent Intellect more
highly than the secrets he learned from various esoteric books. Cf. Idel, Maimonide et
la mystique juiue, pp. 37-38.
23. Cf. an earlier discussion by Abulafia, translated by Scholem in Major Trends, pp. 140-141.
Although there are some divergences between it and the passage quoted here, a variety
of channels for receiving Kabbalah is accepted in both.
24. See also Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 170, 343.
25. Moshe Idel, "Nahmanides: Kabbalah, Halakhah, and Spiritual Leadership," Tarbitz 64
(1995), p. 545 n. 43 (Hebrew); for an English-language version of this study see
M. Idel and M. Ostow, eds., Jewish Mystical Leaders and Leadership (Jason Aronson,
Northvale, N.J., 1998), pp. 15-96.
26. Idel, "Nahmanides" (Tarbitz), pp. 572-573.
27. On this important work see also chaps. 15 and 16 and app. 3.
28. See Yehuda Liebes, "Rabbi Solomon ibnGabirol's Use of Sefer Yetsira and a Commentary
on His Poem 'I Love Thee,'" in The Beginning of Jewish Mysticism in Medieual Europe:
Proceedings o/the Second International Conference on the History qfjeurish Mysticism, ed. J. Dan
(Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 73-123 (Hebrew).
•359-
Notes to Pages 29-35
29. See Elliot R. Wolfson, "Merkavah Traditions in Philosophical Garb: Judah Halevi
Reconsidered," Proceedings ojthe American Academyjorjeiuish Research 57 (1991), pp. 179-242.
30. See more recently Moshe Idel, "Ramon Lull and Ecstatic Kabbalah," Journal ojthe
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988), pp. 170-174; idem, "Ditjnitates and Kauod: Two
Theological Concepts in Catalan Mysticism," Studio Luliana 36 (1996), pp. 69-78;
Harvey J. Hames, The Art oj Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century
(Brill, Leiden, 2000).
31. On the three models in Kabbalah see, e.g., Idel, Hasidism, pp. 45-145; idem, Messianic
Mystics, pp. 248-256; idem, Absorbing Perfections, passim; idem, "Sabbath: On Concepts
of Time in Jewish Mysticism," in Sabbath: Idea, History, Reality, ed. Gerald Blidstein
(Ben Gurion University Press, Beer Sheva, 2004), pp. 57-93; and idem, Kabbalah and
Eros, pp. 213-223.
Chapter 2: Abraham Abulafia and Ecstatic Kabbalah
1. On this important Jewish Kabbalist see Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 119-155; Idel, The
Mystical Experience; Wolfson, Abraham Abulajia; Hames, Like Angels on Jacob's Ladder; Idel,
"Abraham Abulafia," pp. 11-15; idem, "Maimonides and Kabbalah," pp. 58-62; idem,
"Abraham Abulafia, un kabbaliste mystique," La irie spirituelle 68 (1988), pp. 381-392;
and idem, "Maimonides' Guide ojthe Perplexed," pp. 206-208.
2. On this issue see chaps. 3 and 6.
3. For a detailed description of these techniques see Idel, The Mystical Experience; and
chap. 5 of this volume.
4. See a bibliographical description of these lost writings in Idel, "Abraham Abulafia,"
pp. n-15.
5. See Abraham Abulafia, Sejer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1580, fol. 164b;
as well as a fragment from the Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut, Ms. Munich 43, printed by
Henrich Graetz, "Abraham Abulafia, der Pseudomessias," Monatschrift Jiir Geschichte
und Wissenschajt des Judentums 36 (1887), p. 558.
6. See Idel, "Maimonides and Kabbalah," pp. 58-62; and later in this chapter.
7. For a portrait of this mystic see Moshe Idel, "Abraham Abulafia, un kabbaliste
mystique," La vie spirituelle 68 (1988), pp. 381-392; Hames, Like Antjels on Jacob's Ladder.
8. Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1580, fols. i64a-b. For a detailed analysis see Idel, "Maimonides
and Kabbalah," pp. 60-63; an d idem, "Maimonides' Guide ojthe Perplexed," pp. 206-208.
9. Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 76. See also ibid., p. 86.
10. Ibid., p. 76.
n. Ibid. For another instance of discussing secrets of the Torah with a gentile see
Abraham Abulafia, Majteah ha-Hokhmot, Ms. Parma 141, fol. 29b.
12. See Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, pp. 75, 78.
13. The poetic opening to his book Sefer Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', printed by Jellinek as an
appendix to Abulafia's Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 87. For the propagandistic activity of Abulafia see
also his Commentary on Sefer ha-Yashar, Ms. Rome, Casanatense 38, fol. 41a.
14. Scholem, Major Trends, p. 122.
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Notes to Pages 36-38
15. See Jellinek, Beth ha-Midrasch, 3: xlii.
16. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 22-24.
17. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 98-99.
18. Jellinek, Beth ha-Midrasch, 3: xli.
19. The very few other significant discussions in Spain of the combinations of letters are
found in Kabbalists who either were Ashkenazi by extraction or drew their inspiration
from Hasidei Ashkenaz. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, p. 45 n. 38; and idem, "Ashkenazi
Esotericism and Kabbalah in Barcelona," Hispaniajudaica Bulletin 5 (2007), pp. 69-113.
20. Jellinek, Beth ha-Midrasch, 3: xlii-xliii.
21. In general, Abulafia's attitude to several central topics in Jewish esotericism is drasti-
cally different from that of theosophical-theurgical Spanish Kabbalah. See Idel,
"Maimonides and Kabbalah," pp. 31-79; and idem, "The Kabbalistic Interpretations
of the Secret of 'Arayyot in Early Kabbalah," Kabbalah 12 (2004), pp. 157-185, 199
(Hebrew).
22. Gershom Scholem, The Qabbalah of Sefer ha-Temunah and of Abraham Abulajia, ed. J. ben
Shlomo (Akademon, Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 229-239.
23. See Jellinek, Beth ha-Midrasch, 3: xliii.
24. In fact we can easily understand the evolution of Spanish Kabbalah either before or
after Abulafia without resorting to ecstatic Kabbalah. However, this is impossible in
the cases of Italian, Byzantine, and Middle Eastern Kabbalah.
25. SymptomaticaJIy, Abulafia has influenced two philosophers livingin Spain, R. Abraham
Shalom and R. Moshe Narboni; see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 63-71.
26. Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," pp. 3-68.
27. See Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 330-331.
28. See Abulafia's epistle Ve-Zot li-Yhudah, pp. 15, 19.
29. Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, p. 63; Reuchlin, On the Art ojthe Kabbalah, p. 92;
Gershom Scholem, Die Erforschung der Kabbala von Reuchlin bis zur Getjenuiart (Selbstverlag
der Stadt, Pforzheim, 1969), pp. 11-12. In his thoroughgoing presentation of this
distinction in Major Trends, p. 124, Scholem proposes this theory concerning the diver-
gence between ecstatic and theosophical Kabbalah as his own, without mentioning
Abulafia as a source. For a more detailed examination of Abulafia's own definition of
Kabbalah as distinct from the theosophical one see Idel, "Defining Kabbalah" and
"On the Meanings of the Term 'Kabbalah,' " pp. 69-73.
30. Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 14-17, 22-23.
31. See Idel, Kabbalah: Neu; Perspectiues, pp. 112-136, 156-172, 173-176, 191-194; and idem,
"On the Doctrine of Divinity at the Beginning of Kabbalah," in Shefa Tal: Studies in
Jeurish Thought and Culture Presented to Bracha Sack, ed. Z. Gries, Ch. Kreisel, and B. Huss
(Ben Gurion University Press, Beer Sheva, 2004), pp. 131-148 (Hebrew).
32. See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 91-96.
33. See ibid., pp. 126-132, 136-140.
34. Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 61-64.
35. Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 131-134.
•361-
Notes to Pages 38-44
36. Idel, Hasidism, pp. 56-60. See also M. Idel, "On Prophecy and Early Hasidism," in
Studies in Modern Religions: Religious Movements and Babi-Baha'i Faiths, ed. Moshe Sharon
(Brill, Leiden, 2004), pp. 68-70.
t,-j. See Moshe Idel, "R. Menahem Mendel of Shklov and R. Avraham Abulafia," in The
Vilna Gaon and His Disciples, ed. M. Hallamish, Y. Rivlin, and R. Shuhat (Bar Ilan
University Press, RamatGan, 2003), pp. 173-183 (Hebrew).
38. See, e.g., Wolfson, Abraham Abulajia; andHames, Like Angels on Jacob's Ladder.
39. Amnon Gross, personal communication to author, 2002.
Chapter 3: Abraham Abulafia's Activity in Italy
1. For more on Rome as the locus of eschatological events see Idel, Messianic Mystics,
pp. 82-84, 33 2 n - 65. See now also Hames, Like Angels on Jacob's Ladder, pp. 71-88.
2. Nahmanides, 'Otzar ha-Vikkuhim, ed. Y. D. Eisenstein (Reznik, New York, 1928), p. 88.
3. Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," pp. 11-12, 42-43 n. 43.
4. Namely Capua in gematria.
5. This is one of the designations that Abulafia took for himself, as it amounts in
gematria to the numerical value of Abraham, namely 248.
6. Ziu ha-shekhinah. This rabbinic term was interpreted in ecstatic Kabbalah as pointing to
an ecstatic experience. See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 32-33.
7. This may be a remark pointing to anthropomorphic understandings of the divinity,
influential in some circles in contemporary Italy. See Israel M. Ta-Shma, "Nimmuqei
Humash le-Rabbi Isaiah mi-Tram," Qiryat Sefer 64 (1992-93), pp. 751-753 (Hebrew).
8. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Sitrei Torah, Ms. Paris, BN 774, fol. 120a.
9. See Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," pp. 62-68.
10. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1580, fol. 165b;
Jellinek, Beth ha-Midrasch, 3: xli.
11. See Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fol. 164a. On the somewhat earlier and more
famous figure see Israel M. Ta-Shma, "R. Jesaiah di Trani the Elder and His
Connections with Byzantium and Palestine," Shalem 4 (1984), p. 411 (Hebrew).
12. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 197-200; and idem, "On the History of the
Interdiction against the Study of Kabbalah before the Age of Forty," AJS Review
5 (1980), pp. 1-20 (Hebrew Section).
13. This is one of the names Abulafia took for himself. Raziel is numerically equivalent to
Abraham. See Harar, Sha'arei Tzedeq, pp. 47-51.
14. Hitboded. On this significance of this text see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 108-111.
15. Abraham Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut, Ms. Munich 43, fols. 203b-204a,
printed by Heinrich Graetz, "Abraham Abulafia der Pseudo-Messias," Monatschrifffur
Geschichte und Wissenschajt des Judentums 36 (1887), p. 558.
16. See Augustin Demski, Pabst Nicholas HI — Eine Monographie (H. Schoningh, Miinster,
1903), p. 347 n. 2. Abulafia's testimony regarding the pope's sudden demise, "he was
suddenly smitten by a plague, and on that night he was slain and died," corresponds
to an amazing degree with the Christian sources, which emphasize the suddenness of
•362-
Notes to Pages 44-48
the pope's demise. Demski collects these sources, ibid., p. 348 n. 1. I offer here two
examples: "Item iste Nicholaus Papa Postae existens in Castro Firmano (Soriano)
loquelam suam perdidit et subito ipse decessit"; "Dominus Johannes Gaitanus Papa
nominatus Dominus Nicolaus Papa IV [sic] obiit non bono modo sine poenitentia ut
dicebatur." Another source, also recorded in Demski, ibid., describes the pope's
death as follows: "Nicolaus Papa III, in castro Suriano existens subito factus apoplect-
icus, sine loquela moritur." The word subito (suddenly) recurs in two of these texts,
whereas the third text emphasizes the strange nature of his death, and apparently
comes closest to Abulafia's "smitten by a plague." These texts also corroborate
Abulafia's version of the pope's death in Soriano.
17. Abraham Abulafia, Sejer ha-'Edut, Ms. Rome, Angelica 38, fols. I4b-i5a; Ms. Munich
285, fol. 39b; see also Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 126-127, x 99- The Hebrew
original of the passage is printed in the Hebrew edition of this book (Magnes Press,
Jerusalem, 1988), pp. no-in, 154. See also Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 336-338.
18. For more on this passage see Idel, Messianic Mystics, pp. 82-84. On Abulafia and mes-
sianism see also Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 45-62. This allegorical technique
is representative of Abulafia's hermeneutics, covered further in chap. 5 of this volume.
19. M. Idel, "On Symbolic Self-Interpretations in Thirteenth-Century Jewish Writings,"
Hebrew Uniuersity Studies in Literature and the Arts 16 (1988), pp. 90-96.
20. Seyirim. See Leviticus 17:7, in Asher Weiser, ed., Abraham ibn Ezra's Commentary on the
Pentateuch, vol. 3 (Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1976), p. 53. On the danger of
goats, plausibly pointing to demonic powers, when met on Friday evening, see already
in the talmudic discussions and Mahzor Vitry, by R. Simhah, a student of Rashi, ed.
Shimeon ha-Levi Horowitz (reprint; Bolka, Jerusalem, 1963), p. 81 (Hebrew). These
sources discuss the term sakkanat se'yirim, apparently following a biblical theme. See
also Nahmanides on Leviticus 16:8 for the nexus between Sammael and goats; and
Louis Ginzberg, Legends ofthejeifs, vol. 5 (JPS, Philadelphia, 1968), p. 312.
21. Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 67. For more on issues contained in this passage see Moshe
Idel, "'The Time of the End': Apocalypticism and Its Spiritualization in Abraham
Abulafia's Eschatology," in Apocalyptic Time, ed. Albert Baumgarten (Brill, Leiden,
2000), pp. 155-186.
22. Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 67. BYT in gematria is 21, the gematria of the divine name
'eHeYeH.
23. See the text translated and analyzed in Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 105.
24. Abraham Abulafia, Sejer 'Ish 'Adam, Ms. Rome, Angelica 38, fol. 3a.
25. This is a play on the Hebrew consonants of the name of the town Messina.
26. Abulafia, Sejer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fol. 165b.
27. Namely sometime in the fall of 1285.
28. Abulafia, Sejer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fol. 166a.
29. Ibid. For more on his fantasies and visions see Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 144-145.
30. Abraham Abulafia, Sejer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 133, fol. ia,
reproduced in Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," p. 20.
•363-
Notes to Pages 48-53
31. On the possible relationship between the name of this student of Abulafia and
Lessing's Nathan the Wise, see Harar, Sha'arei Tzedeq, pp. 32, 345-346.
32. On this book see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 91-92.
33. Abulafia, Sefer Mafteah ha-Hokhmot, fol. ia, reproduced in Idel, "Abraham Abulafia,"
p. 20.
34. Abulafia, Ve-Zot li-Yhudah, p. 19. On this controversy see Moshe Idel, "R. Shlomo ibn
Adret and Abraham Abulafia: For the History of a Neglected Polemic," in Atara L'Haim:
Studies in the Talmud and Medieval Rabbinic Literature in Honor of Professor Haim Zalman
Dimitrovsky, ed. D. Boyarinetal. (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 235-251 (Hebrew).
35. In his Responsum I, 548, printed now in Teshuvot ha-Rashba, ed. H. Z. Dimitrowsky, vol.
1 (Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1990), p. 101, he mentions his writings and those
of the holy communities in Sicily. The use of the plural shows that it was not only to
Palermo that Ibn Adret wrote in this context.
36. Ibid.; and Idel, "R. Shlomo ibn Adret and Abraham Abulafia."
37. See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 91-92.
38. See Abulafia, Ve-Zot li-Yhudah, pp. 13-28.
39. Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 85.
40. Abulafia, Sheua' Netiuot ha-Torah, pp. 1-24.
41. See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 91-92.
42. Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fol. 55a.
43. Abulafia, Ve-Zot li-Yhudah, p. 19. On this passage see Idel, "On the Meanings of the
Term 'Kabbalah,'" pp. 40-42; and Wolfson, Abraham Abulajia, pp. 99-107. For
Abulafia's own interpretations of the Trinity, see Idel, Ben, pp. 315-318.
44. Francois Secret, "L'Ensis Pauli de Paulus de Heredia," Sefarad 26 (1966), pp. 79-102,
254-271, especially p. 100.
Chapter 4: Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore
1. For a survey of this understanding of Kabbalah see Moshe Idel, "On the Theologization
ofKabbalah in Modern Scholarship, "in Religious Apologetics — Philosophical Argumentation,
ed. Y. Schwartz and V. Krech (J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 2004), pp. 165-167. For more
on this issue see the beginning of chap. 9 in this volume.
2. For a survey of changing attitudes toward Abulafia's Kabbalah in recent scholarship see
Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 119-155; Moshe Idel, "The Contribution of Abraham
Abulafia's Kabbalah to the Understanding of Jewish Mysticism," in Gershom Scholem's
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism: Fifty Years After, ed. P. Schaefer and J. Dan (J. C. B. Mohr,
Tubingen, 1993), pp. 117-143; Ronald Kiener, "From Ba'al ha-Zohar to Prophet to
Ecstatic: The Vicissitudes of Abulafia in Contemporary Scholarship," ibid., pp. 145-159;
Wolfson, Abraham Abulajia; and Hames, Like Angels on Jacob's Ladder.
3. On techniques in Jewish mysticism see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 74-111; and
idem, Enchanted Chains, passim.
4. See Paul Fenton, "La 'Hitbodedut' chez les premiers Qabbalistes en Orient et chez les
Soufis," in Priere, mystique et judaisme, ed. R. Goetschel (Presses Universitaires de
•364-
Notes to Pages 53-55
France, Paris, 1987), pp. 133-157; Moshe Idel, "Hitbodedut: On Solitude in Jewish
Mysticism," in Einsamkeit: Archdologie der literarischen Kommunikation, vol. 6, ed. Aleida
Assmann and Jan Assmann (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, 2000), pp. 192-198.
5. See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 103-169; idem, "Hitbodedut as Concentration in
Jewish Philosophy," in Shlomo Pines Jubilee Volume on the Occasion o/His Eightieth Birthday,
ed. Moshe Idel, Zeev W. Harvey, and E. Schweid, vol. 1 (Magnes Press, Jerusalem,
1988), pp. 39-60 (Hebrew); Sara Klein-Braslavy, "Prophecy, Clairvoyance, and
Dreams and the Concept of 'Hitbodedut' in Gersonides' Thought," Da'at 39 (1997),
pp. 23-68 (Hebrew).
6. Yitboded. This term can also be translated here as "concentrate."
7. Abraham Abulafia, Matzref Ia-Kesef Ms. Sassoon 56, fols. 33b~34a. On this passage see
also Idel, "Hitbodedut: On Solitude in Jewish Mysticism," p. 195.
8. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer ha-Hesheq, Ms. New York, JTS 1801, fol. 9a, corrected in accor-
dance with the quotation of this passage in Ms. London, British Library 749,
fols. i2a-b, where Abulafia's passage has been copied in R. Hayyim Vital's Sha'arei
Qedushah under the mistaken title Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba'. Even so, it is essentially a
better version of the unique extant manuscript of Sefer ha-Hesheq.
9. Simhah shel mitzuah. Cf BT, Sabbath, fol. 30a.
10. Eleazar of Worms, Sefer Sodei Razayya', Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1572, fol. 130a.
n. Psalms 33:2, 47:7, 66:2, etc.
12. Cf. Mekhileta' on Exodus 18:19; an d Boaz Cohen, Lau; and Tradition in Judaism (JTS, New
York, 1959), p. 24 n. 70.
13. Eleazar ofWorms, Perushei Siddur ha-Tejillah la-Roqeah, ed. M. Hershler and Y. A. Hershler,
vol. 1 (Makhon ha-rav Herschler, Jerusalem, 1992), p. 145. See also ibid., p. 149.
14. See BT, Sabbath, fol. 30b. Cf. the texts of R. Eleazar of Worms quoted earlier.
15. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1580, fol. 62a; Idel,
The Mystical Experience, pp. 61-62.
16. Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fols. 5gb-6oa. On the kiss of death as a moment of
ecstasy in other texts of Abulafia see Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 180-184.
17. Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fols. 6oa-b.
18. See the anonymous Ms. Paris, BN 848, fol. 7b; and Adam Afterman, The Intention
of Prayers in Early Ecstatic Kabbalah (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2004), pp. 25-26,
285-286 (Hebrew). See also below, notes 43 and 45.
19. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 13-71.
20. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Mafteah ha-Re'ayon, Ms. Vatican 291, fol. 21a.
21. Abulafia, Sejer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fols. i63b-i64a.
22. Aristotle, Metaphysics XII.7. 1072b; idem, Ethics VII.ii74a-ii76a. For Maimonides see
HilkhotTeshuuah 8:2; Haqdamah le-Pereq Heleq, Sefer ha-Ma'or (Tel Aviv, 1948), pp. 121-122;
Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1963), pt. Ill, chap. 51. Maimonides emphasized that the pleasure that
accompanies apprehension "does not belong to the genus of bodily pleasures."
23. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, pt. Ill, chap. 51.
•365-
Notes to Pages 56-59
24. Idel, The Mystical Experience, p. 125.
25. Abraham Abulafia, Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1582, fol. 14b. See also
Idel, "Maimonides and Kabbalah," pp. 77-78. For more on the death by a kiss in Kabbalah
in general see Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 180-184; ar, d more recendy Michael
Fishbane, The Kiss of God (University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1994), pp. 39-41.
26. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Sitrei Torah, Ms. Paris, BN 774, fol. 117a.
27. Idem, Sefer ha-Ge'ulah, Ms. Leipzig 39, fol. 4b.
28. Idem, Sefer Hayyei ha-Nefesh, Ms. Munich 408, fol. ib.
29. Idem, Sefer Sitrei Torah, fol. 115b. For more on the figure 177 in Abulafia's thought see
Idel, "Maimonides' Guide ojthe Perplexed," pp. 212-216.
30. Untided fragment in the untided, anonymous Ms. Florence, Laurenziana-Medicea
Plut. II, 48, fol. 89b. On this manuscript see the identification of Abulafia as author
and the discussion in M. Idel, "A Unique Manuscript of an Untitled Treatise of
Abraham Abulafia in Biblioteca Laurenziana-Medicea," Kabbalah 17 (2008), pp. 7-28.
31. Abulafia, Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', fols. 4b~5a.
32. Ibid., fol. 54a.
33. Ibid., fols. 4b~5a. On the allegorical understanding of the "congregation of Israel" in
Abulafia's thought see Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 211-212 n. 36; and Wolfson,
Abraham Abulajia, pp. 66, 127, 215.
34. Abraham Abulafia, 'Or ha-Sekhel, Ms. Vatican 233, fol. 127b.
35. Abulafia, Sefer ha-Hesheq, fol. 35b.
36. See, e.g., Deuteronomy 4:4. On the importance of the unitive expressions in both
Kabbalah and Hasidism, see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 36-73; and idem,
"Universalization and Integration: Two Conceptions of Mystical Union in Jewish
Mysticism," in Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue, ed. M. Idel
and B. McGinn (Macmillan, New York, 1989), pp. 27-58, 157-161, 195-203.
37. Namely the Agent Intellect, envisioned as Metatron. For more on this passage see Idel,
Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, p. 10.
38. Abraham Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer ha-Yashar, Ms. Rome, Angelica 38, fols. 3ib-32a;
Scholem, Major Trends, p. 382; Idel, The Mystical Experience, p. 126.
39. See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 109. Gikatilla's Sha'ar ha-Niqqud was
printed in a collection of early kabbalistic tracts tided 'Arzei Leuanon (Venice, 1601),
fol. 38a. This collection was reprinted in 1748 in Krakow, and later in Koretz, and
Hasidic masters quoted it; see Moshe Idel, "The Magical and Theurgic Interpretation
of Music in Hebrew Texts from the Renaissance to Hasidism," Yuual 4 (1982), p. 61 n.
164 (Hebrew). Compare also some texts of Abulafia and his school, discussed in Idel,
Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 18-19; ar, d R- Joseph Gikatilla's Sha'arei 'Orah, ed.
J. ben Shlomo, vol. 1 (Mossad Bialik, Jerusalem 1970), pp. 48, 206, and passim. See
also the view of R Elijah deVidas, dealt with in Idel, Hasidism, pp. 171-172, 179, where
cleaving to God is also related to linguistic elements. Compare also Scholem's remark
that the formula used by Hasidic masters in order to convey the idea of cleaving to
God, deuequt ha-Shem, may be related to views of Gikatilla found in (the unfortunately
•366-
Notes to Pages 59-63
unmentioned) manuscripts of this Kabbalist. See Gershom Scholem, "Two First
Testimonies on the Contrarities of Hasidism and the Besht," Tarbitz 20 (1950), p. 236
(Hebrew); and the different opinion of Tishby, The Wisdom ofthe Zohar, 2: 302 n. 151.
40. Abulafia, Sefer Sitrei Torah, fol. 140a.
41. Abraham Abulafia, Shomer MitzuJah, Ms. Paris, BN 853, fol. 48b. On this view of
Kabbalah, which assumes both mystical and magical aspects, see my discussion of the
mystico-magical model in Hasidism, pp. 95-102.
42. Abulafia, Sefer Sitrei Torah, fol. 115b.
43. ha-Mitzuot (commandments) = 541 = sekhel ha-po'el (Agent Intellect). On this gematria
see Moshe Idel, "The Kabbalistic Interpretations of the Secret of 'Arayyot in Early
Kabbalah," Kabbalah 12 (2004), pp. 157-159 (Hebrew). See also below, note 45; and
chap. 5 of this volume.
44. In Hebrew the consonants of ha-ner, "candle," are the same as those of nahar, "river."
On a different understanding of this verse, especially the term "river," see M. Hellner-
Eshed, "A Riuer Issues Forth Jrom Eden": On the Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar
(Alma Am 'Oved, Tel Aviv, 2005) (Hebrew).
45. Untitled fragment, Ms. Florence, Laurenziana-Medicea Plut. II, 48, fols. 7ga-b. On
the possible authorship of this treatise, see note 30 above. The affinity between letters
and the knowledge of the Agent Intellect means that the cosmic intellect is attained by
means of the combination of letters. Thus also the term "commandments," which
amounts in gematria to shekhel ha-po'el, means that the letters of the commandments
can be used in order to attain the Agent Intellect.
46. Compare other expressions of this view discussed in Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,
pp. 13, 15-16.
47. Abulafia, Sheva'Netiuotha-Torah, p. 8; Idel, "Abraham Abulafia, "pp. 86-87, 92—93, 96,
98-99, 103. On the possible importance of this unique status of language as a form of
cognition higher than imagination for later developments in the description of man as
having the "form of speech," as in Dante Alighieri, for example, I hope to elaborate
elsewhere. See, for the time being, Eco, The Search Jor the Perfect Language, pp. 48-52.
48. Metzuyyar ba-sekhel. On the term tziyyur as forming a concept see Harry A. Wolfson,
"The Terms Tasaivuiur and Tasdiq in Arabic Philosophy and Their Greek, Latin and
Hebrew Equivalents," Moslem World, April 1943, pp. 1-15.
49. Abulafia, Sefer Hayyei ha-NeJesh, fols. gia-b.
50. Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 79.
51. Ms. Florence, Laurenziana-Medicea Plut. II, 48, fol. 72a.
52. Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fol. 157b.
53. On the phrase "the way of prophecy" see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, p. 144 n. 22.
54. R. Aharon ha-Kohen Perlov of Apia, 'Or ha-Ganuz le-Tzaddiqim (Zolkiew, 1800), fols. 46a-b.
On this book see Hayyim Lieberman, 'Ohel RaHeL (privately printed, New York, 1980),
pp. 8-11 (Hebrew). A partial version of this passage is found in R. Aharon of Apta's Sefer
Keter Nehora' (Benei Beraq, 1980), unpaginated introduction, haqdamah sheniyah, para. 7.
55. E.g., R. Aharon ha-Kohen, 'Or ha-Ganuz le-Tzaddiqim, fols. 17b, 18a.
•367-
Notes to Pages 64-71
Chapter 5: Abraham Abulafia's Hermeneutics
1. See Scholem, On the Kabbalah, pp. 5-32; W. Bacher, "L'exegese biblique dans le Zohar," REJ
22 (1891), pp. 33-46, especially pp. 37-40. See also idem, "Das Merkwort PRDS in der
Jiidischen Bibelexegese," Zeitschnjtjur die alttestamentliche Wissenschajt 13 (1893), pp. 294-305;
Peretz Sandler, "On the Question of Pardes and the Fourfold Method," in Sefer Eliahu
Auerbach, ed. A. Biram (Qiryat Sefer, Jerusalem, 1955), pp. 222-235 (Hebrew). See also A.
van der Heide, "Pardes: Methodological Reflections on the Theory of Four Senses," Journal
ojjeimsh Studies 34 (1983), pp. 147-159; Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 429-435. Some of the
following discussions draw upon this last book, where additional bibliography is found.
2. See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 82-124.
3. See already the interpretation of Hagigah in Ba'alei ha-Tosajbt, fol. 11b.
4. Abraham Abulafia, Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', Ms. Paris, BN 777, fol. 108a.
5. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 387-388.
6. Exegetical techniques were explored in great detail by Ashkenazi Hasidim; see Joseph
Dan, "The Ashkenazi Hasidic 'Gates of Wisdom,'" in Hommage a Georges Vajda, ed.
G. Nahon and C. Touati (Peeters, Louvain, 1980), pp. 183-189; and Ivan G. Marcus,
"Exegesis for the Few and for the Many: Judah he-Hasid's Biblical Commentary," in
The Acje of the Zohar, ed. J. Dan (Institute of Jewish Studies, Hebrew University,
Jerusalem, 1989), pp. 1-24. In Kabbalah they were adopted in Abulafia's hermeneu-
tics; see Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 95-119; and idem, "Abulafia's
Secrets of the Guide: A Linguistic Turn," in Perspectives on Jeurish Thought and Mysticism,
ed. Alfred Ivri, E. R. Wolfson, and A. Arkush (Harwood Academic Publishers,
Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 289-329.
7. See Idel, "Maimonides and Kabbalah," pp. 73-74.
8. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 133,
fols. 7b-8a. See a very similar discussion, ibid., fol. 12b; and Idel, Absorbing Perfections,
pp. 269-270.
g. Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, fol. 25a. See Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 262.
10. See Daniel Matt, "The Old-New Words: The Aura of Secrecy in the Zohar," in Gershom
Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism: Fifty Years After, ed. P. Schaefer and J. Dan
(J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 1993), pp. 200-202.
11. Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, fols. 2oa-b; and Idel, Absorbing Perfections,
pp. 327-328. See also Abulafia, Sheua' Netiuot ha-Torah, pp. 3-4, discussed in Idel,
Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 100-101.
12. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 80-110.
13. On the interpretations of the forefathers' names in Abulafia see Idel, The Mystical
Experience, pp. 127-128.
14. Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, fol. 23b; Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. in.
15. Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, fol. 19b; Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. in,
16. Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, fol. 20a; Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. in.
17. Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, fol. 20a; Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. in.
18. Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, fol. 20a; Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. in.
•368-
Notes to Pages 71-78
ig. In the original left mishpat, which regularly means "according to judgment."
20. Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, fols. 230-243.
21. Abraham Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut, Ms. Rome, Angelica 38, fol. ga;
Ms. Munich 285, fol. 13a; Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, p. 66; and idem, The Mystical
Experience, pp. 127, 140. See also the passages translated and analyzed in Idel, Messianic
Mystics, pp. 71-72, 82-83.
22. Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut, Ms. Rome, Angelica 38, fols. 140-153; Ms. Munich
285, fol. 3gb; see also Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 126-127, x 99; idem, Messianic
Mystics, pp. 82-83. F° r more on the context of this passage see chap. 6 of this volume.
23. Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut, Ms. Munich 285, fol. 3gb. For more on the pun
Mosheh/ha-Shem in the thirteenth century see Idel, Enchanted Chains, pp. 81-82.
24. Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 127-128.
25. Written in a defective manner, without Vau.
26. For other, similar expressions in Abulafia and his followers see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic
Kabbalah, pp. 11-12; idem, "On Symbolic Self-Interpretations in Thirteenth-Century
Jewish Writings," Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts 16 (ig88), pp. go-g6.
27. Harar, Sha'arei Tzedeq, p. 484. This passage should also be read in the context of
another quotation from the same book, discussed in Idel, Language, Torah, and
Hermeneutics, p. 17. On this passage see Georges Vajda, who translated it into French in
a supplement to his article "Deux chapitres de 1'histoire du conflit entre la Kabbale et
la philosophie: La polemique anti-intellectualiste de Joseph b. Shalom Ashkenazi,"
Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litte'raire du Moyen Age 31 (igs6), pp. 131-132; and Idel,
Absorbing Perfections, pp. 332-335.
28. On part of this passage and its possible affinity to a view of Dante's see Eco, The Search
Jor the Perfect Language, pp. 48-50. The possibility of a contact between Dante's and
Abulafia's views on language is strengthened by the fact that Abulafia's former
teacher, R. Hillel of Verona, spent some years in Forli, where Dante was exiled. On
Dante as a prophet — a self-consciousness reminiscent of Abulafia's — there are
several studies, the most recent of which seems to be that of Raffaelo Morghen,
Dante profeta (Jaca, Milan, ig83), where previous studies are discussed. See also
Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante, Poet ojthe Desert: History and Allegory in the Diuine Comedy
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, ig7g).
2g. On the easy way in ecstatic Kabbalah see Idel, "Defining Kabbalah," pp. 121-122.
Chapter 6: Eschatological Themes and Divine Names in
Abulafia's Kabbalah
1. Namely redemption.
2. Or, according to another plausible interpretation, "In the name of."
3. See Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 76, where a revelation is described as stemming from
'Adonay , while later in the same book he predicts that the Tetragrammaton will awaken
the heart of the shepherd to act as a redeemer.
4. Ibid., p. 7g.
• 3 6g-
Notes to Pages 78-80
5. Ibid., p. 74.
6. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer ha-Melammed, Ms. Paris, BN 680, fol. 308a. The binary vision of
this text, as well as that of R. Nathan Harar in his Sha'arei Tzedeq, is seminal in Abulafia's
thought, especially in the important topic of the continuous struggle between the facul-
ties of intellect and imagination. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 144-145; idem,
Absorbing Perfections, pp. 438-460; and idem, "The Battle of the Urges: Psychomachia in
the Prophetic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia," in Peace and War in Jetuish Culture, ed.
Avriel Bar-Levav (Center Zalman Shazar, Jerusalem, 2006), pp. 99-143 (Hebrew). Thus,
the historical binary vision reflects the psychological one. Both in history and in psy-
chology, Abulafia prefers a binary vision rather than a triadic one, as found for example
in the rabbinic and in Joachim of Fiori's understandings of history as consisting of
three major stages. Abulafia also expressed little interest in the division of the six thou-
sand years into three periods of two millennia, widespread in both Jewish and Christian
eschatology. See Idel, Messianic Mystics, p. 19 and the pertinent footnotes. In my opin-
ion, the first and main impetus for Abulafia's messianism was the belief, widespread
among Jews in Europe, that the victories of the Mongols — imagined to be one or more
of the ten lost Jewish tribes — meant also the beginning of the redemption of Israel. I
have discussed the evidence in ibid., pp. 8, 81, 134, and the pertinent bibliography.
7. See a similar discussion in Joseph Gikatilla's text adduced by Gottlieb, Studies, p. 114
n. 41.
8. Abraham Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut, Ms. Munich 285, fol. 37a.
9. See P. R. Biassiotto, History ojthe Deuelopment ofDeuotion to the Holy Name (St. Bonaventure
College and Seminary, New York, 1943), pp. 69-71; and Augustin Demski, Pabst
Nicholas III — Eine Monographic (H. Schoningh, Miinster, 1903), p. 17.
10. Biassiotto, History, pp. 71-76. In a later period we witness a spiritual phenomenon
altogether similar to that of Abulafia, in the person and activity of St. Bernardine of
Siena, who dedicated his life to preaching and sermonizing on the theme of the holy
name of Jesus. For him, as for Abulafia, the divine name became the essence of
religion. See L. McAodha, "The Holy Name in the Preaching of St. Bernardine
of Siena," Franciscan Studies 29 (1969), pp. 42-58.
n. See Scholem, Sabbatai Seui, pp. 210-211, 282-284.
12. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1580, fol. 41a.
13. For more on this issue see Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 24-27.
14. On the nexus between divine names in the Bible and divine attributes in ancient Judaism
see A. Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God, vol. 1 (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1927), p. 44; N. A. Dahl and A. F. Segal, "Philo and the Rabbis on the Names of
God," Journal Jor the Study ojjudaism 9 (1978), pp. 1-28; Idel, Kabbalah: Neu) Perspectiues,
pp. 128-136. On the importance of theophorism in Jewish thought see Idel, Ben.
15. Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 76.
16. Ibid.
17. This view may have some affinity to the midrashic vision of the change of the names of
the angels by God at the time of the destruction of the Temple, in order to prevent
•370-
Notes to Pages 80-83
invocations by Jewish masters, or magicians, who would attempt to oppose the
destruction of the Temple.
18. The passage refers to the powers of the names. On the status of the divine names and
their powers in Abulafia see Moshe Idel, "Between Magic of Names and Kabbalah of
Names: The Critique of Abraham Abulafia," Mahanayyim 14 (2003), pp. 79-95 (Hebrew);
and idem, Enchanted Chains, pp. 76-79 and the bibliography adduced there.
19. This view is similar to that expressed by Abulafia in a passage from Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 69.
20. See the earlier quotation from Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 79, where the opposition
between this name and the Tetragrammaton is also obvious.
21. Harar, Sha'arei Tzedeq, p. 472. Significant parallels to some aspects of this passage can
be found in ibid., pp. 471 and 475. See more about the background of this passage in
Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 17-18.
22. On this "divine name" see Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 18, 22, 31; Wolfson, Abraham
Abulafia, p. 113 n. 54.
23. On prophecy and the appearance of the divine name in early-thirteenth-century
sources see Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 100-101; and Wolfson, Through a Speculum,
pp. 181-187. Meanwhile I have good reasons to believe that Sefer ha-Nauon, whose
author I propose is an early-thirteenth-century Ashkenazi figure, R. Nehemiah
ben Shlomo the prophet, was known to Abulafia. See Idel, "Some Forlorn Writings."
See also note 6 above, note 56 below, and chap. 7.
24. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', Ms. Paris, BN 777, fol. iog. This
passage was printed by Jellinek as an addendum to Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 84. For an
analysis of the context of this passage see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 15-16;
and idem, "Enoch Is Metatron," Immanuel 24/25 (1990), p. 236; and compare to the
discussion of a passage from Nathan of Gaza in idem, Messianic Mystics, pp. 199-200.
25. Cf. 2 Samuel 5:17.
26. Cf. BT, Sanhedrin, fol. 38a.
27. Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut, Ms. Rome, Angelica 38, fols. I4b-i5a;
Ms. Munich 285, fols. 39b~4oa. See also Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 126-127, x 99;
and above, chap. 5, note 21.
28. Compare also Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 140, 382; and Idel, The Mystical Experience,
pp. 126-127, where some other details of this passage are analyzed.
2g. On this issue see Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 124-125, 134-137.
30. This phrase comes from Sefer Yetzirah VI.4, where it designates God as creator in the
context of His revelation to Abraham. There can be no doubt that Abulafia uses the
first person here because he conceives of himself as a person of as great importance as
the forefather.
31. Abulafia, Ve-Zot Li-Yhudah, pp. 18-19, corrected according to Ms. New York, JTS 1887.
32. Idel, "Defining Kabbalah," pp. 97-122.
33. Abulafia, Ve-Zot Li-Yhudah, p. 16.
34. Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fol. 149b.
35. Ibid., fol. 104b.
•371-
Notes to Pages 83-87
36. The single manuscript of this untitled treatise, found in Ms. Florence, Laurenziana-
Medicea Plut. II, 48, is not so clear here.
37. ha-Shem ha-Meyuhad, in gematria 418.
38. Kelei Mashiyah = 418.
39. Abulafia, untided fragment, Ms. Florence, Laurenziana-Medicea Plut. II, 48, fol. 90a.
40. Abulafia, Ve-Zot Li-Yhudah, p. 18: Yitpa'er. Abulafia uses this verb in the context of his
own claim to have received a revelation of the date of the end.
41. Abraham Abulafia, Majteah ha-Shemot, Ms. New York, JTS 843, fol. 45b.
42. Abulafia, Sefer ha-Melammed, Ms. Paris, BN 680, fol. 297b.
43. On the natural rise of a Jewish state see Shlomo Pines, Studies in the History ofjeuush
Philosophy (Bialik Institute, Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 277-305 (Hebrew).
44. Ms. Florence, Laurenziana-Medicea Plut. II, 48, fol. 21b.
45. Such a calculation occurs also elsewhere in Abulafia as pointing to the mystical experi-
ence of the union of man and God by means of comprehension; see the text analyzed
in Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 7-8.
46. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Hayyei ha-Nefesh, Ms. Munich 408, fol. 46a.
47. Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer ha-Melitz, Ms. Rome, Angelica 38, fol. 5a; Ms. Munich
285, fols. ioa-b.
48. See ibid., Ms. Rome, Angelica 38, fol. 7b: "For the spirit comprises Hebrew circum-
cised powers that instruct truth."
49. See Idel, Hasidism, p. 155.
50. Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer ha-Melitz, Ms. Rome, Angelica 38, fol. 5a.
51. Abraham Abulafia, Matzref la-Kesef, Ms. Sassoon56, fol. 30b. An issue that needs addi-
tional investigation is the possible affinity between Abulafia's interpretation of the
term Yehudy as confession, and an observation by the early-thirteenth-century
Ashkenazi author R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo the prophet. See also Idel, The Mystical
Experience, pp. 18, 22, 31; Wolfson, Abraham Abulajia, p. 113 n. 54.
52. On the difference between the aims of Abulafia and Nahmanides, see Abraham
Berger, "The Messianic Self-Consciouness of Abraham Abulafia: A Tentative
Evaluation," in Essays on Jeurish Life and Thought Presented in Honor of Salo Wittmayer Baron,
ed. Joseph Blau etal. (Columbia University Press, New York, 1959), p. 60.
53. See Moshe Idel, Chapters in Ecstatic Kabbalah (Akademon, Jerusalem, 1990), pp. 65, 66,
69 (Hebrew).
54. Abulafia, Sefer ha-'Ot, p. 80.
55. On the meaning of the term Yisrael in Abulafia's writing, see Idel, "Abraham Abulafia,"
p. 90.
56. See, e.g., Abulafia, Sheua' Netiuot ha-Torah, p. 11. See also the important discussion in
Abulafia's commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed named Hayyei ha-Nefesh, Ms. Munich
408, fols. 65a-b, translated and analyzed in Idel, The Mystical Experience, p. 21, where
the combination of four divine names is described as part of Abulafia's mystical
technique.
•372-
Notes to Pages 87-90
57. Abraham Abulafia, Sejer Sitrei Torah, Ms. Paris, BN 774, fol. 162a.
58. Or "according to."
59. Untitled fragment, Ms. Florence, Laurenziana-Medicea Plut. II, 48, fol. 88b.
Chapter 7: Abraham Abulafia and R. Menahem ben Benjamin
1. Abraham Abulafia, Sejer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1580, fols. i65b-i66a;
Jellinek, Beth ha-Midrasch, 3: xlii.
2. Sa'adyah Gaon's Commentary on Sejer Yetzirah is quoted by R. Menahem Recanati; see
his Commentary on the Torah, fol. 46c.
3. See Gershom Scholem, Peraqim le-Toldot Sifrut ha-Qabbalah (Jerusalem, 1931), p. 93
(Hebrew). On Ibn Ezra and Sejer Yetzirah see Naftali ben-Menahem, 'Inianei ibn Ezra
(Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1978), pp. 270-271 (Hebrew); and AbeLipshitz, Ibn
Ezra Studies (Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1982), p. g n. 45. See, however, Israel
Weinstock, An "Anonymous" Commentary on Sejer Yetzirah Jrom the Foundation of Abraham
Abulajia (Attributed to Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra) (Mosad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1984),
pp. 16-19 (Hebrew), who denies the existence of such a commentary written by Ibn
Ezra; and more recently the important appendix by Paul Fenton in Georges Vajda, Le
commentaire sur "Le liure de la Creation" de Dunas ibn Tamim de Kairouan, ed. Paul Fenton
(Peeters, Paris, 2002), pp. 159-175.
4. On this commentary see Vajda, Le commentaire sur "Le liure de la Creation."
5. Namely the commentary of R Sabbatai Donnolo; on his views in matters of mysticism
see more recentiy Elliot R. Wolfson, "The Theosophy of Sabbetai Donnolo, with
Special Emphasis on the Doctrine of Sefirot in His Sejer Hakhmoni," Jewish History 6
(1992), pp. 281-316.
6. See Daniel Abrams, "Traces of the Lost Commentary on the Book oJCreation by R. Jacob
ben Jacob ha-Kohen," Kabbalah 2 (1997), pp. 311-341 (Hebrew).
7. This commentary is probably lost.
8. On this commentary, usually printed under the name of Nahmanides, see Isaiah
Tishby, Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches, vol. 1 (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1982),
pp. 17-21 (Hebrew).
9. Gershom Scholem, Kituei Yad be-Kabbalah (National Library, Jerusalem, 1930), p. 112
(Hebrew). Compare, however, his earlier and much more suspicious attitude to
Abulafia's testimony in his review of Jehuda Wiestinetzki and J. Freimann, eds., Das
Buch der Frommen, in Qiryat Sejer 1 (1924), pp. 205-206 (Hebrew).
10. The meaning is not clear. See Scholem, Peraqim, p. 93 n. 1.
n. On the issue of 231 gates see Idel, Golem, pp. 10-11, 59, 81-82, 98.
12. Apparendy an inhabitant of Beziers; I hope to discuss elsewhere the nature of this
commentary and to print the extant fragments that belong to it.
13. Namely Barukh Togarmi, whose commentary on Sejer Yetzirah has been printed by
Gershom Scholem, Ha-Kabbalah she! Sejer ha-Temunah ve-shel Abraham Abulajia, ed. J. ben
Shlomo (Akademon, Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 229-239.
•373-
Notes to Pages 90-94
14. Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fol. 16b, printed, with some errors, in Jellinek, Beth
ha-Midrasch, 3: xlii-xliii. See also Paul Fenton, in the appendix to Vajda, Le commentaire
sur "Le liure de la Creation," pp. 160-161.
15. See Abrams, "Traces of the Lost Commentary on the Book of Creation."
16. A detailed description of this manuscript is found in P. Perreau and Moritz
Steinschneider, "Hebraische Handschriften in Parma, nach Mittheilungen des Herrn
Bibliothekars Abbe R. Perreau," Yeschurun 6 (1868), pp. 181-182. See also Gottlieb,
Studies, pp. 99-105; and Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 42-46.
17. See Ithamar Gruenwald, "A Preliminary Critical Edition of Sefer Yezira," Israel Oriental
Studies 1 (1971), p. 136.
18. See above, note 8.
19. See above, note 9.
20. See above, note 4.
21. See Daniel Abrams, "R. Eleazar ha-Darshan's Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah," 'Alei Sefer
19 (2001), pp. 69-87 (Hebrew).
22. See above, note 10.
23. See Idel, Golem, pp. 96-97, and p. 114 n. 7 for a list of manuscripts, most of them
related to Italy.
24. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 188.
25. See Idel, Golem, pp. 92-93.
26. See Scholem, On the Kabbalah, pp. 176-177; Yehuda Liebes, Het'o shel 'Elisha'
(Academon, Jerusalem, 1990), pp. 132-137 (Hebrew); and Idel, "Golems and God,"
pp. 235-243.
27. This issue needs a much more detailed analysis, which cannot be done here.
28. On fols. 6a-8b there is a fragment of R. Asher's Commentary on the Secret oJSheuu'ah,
printed in Daniel Abrams, ed., R. Asher ben David: His Complete Works and Studies in His
Kabbalistic Thought (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 1996), p. 39 (Hebrew).
29. See Perreau and Steinschneider, "Hebraische Handschriften in Parma," pp. 181-182.
See also Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 99-105.
30. See Abulafia, Sejer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fols. i64a-b, quoted in chap. 2, sec. 2.
31. See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, p. 76. 1 hope to demonstrate elsewhere the affini-
ties between these two fragments and the thought of Togarmi.
32. See Moshe Idel, "R. Shlomo ibn Adret and Abraham Abulafia: For the History of a
Neglected Polemic," in Atara L'Haim: Studies in the Talmud and Medieval Rabbinic Literature
in Honor 0/ Professor Haim Zalman Dimitrovsky, ed. D. Boyarin et al. (Magnes Press,
Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 235-251 (Hebrew).
33. For a detailed description of the content see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 37-40.
34. See Abrams, R. Asher ben David, p. 39. R. Asher ben David's Commentary on the Divine
Name is also found with a book of Abulafia's in Ms. Paris, BN 680, a fact that may attest
to a connection between their presence together in the same manuscripts and the
possibility that Abulafia brought R. Asher's commentary to Italy.
•374-
Notes to Pages 94-98
35. For a detailed description of the correspondences between Ms. Parma 2784, Catalogue
de Rossi 1390 (hereafter Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390), and Ms. New York, JTS 8124, on
the one hand, and Ms. Paris, BN 763, and Ms. London, British Library 756, on the
other hand, see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 33-46.
36. See a detailed description in ibid., pp. 40-42.
37. Ms. Paris, BN 763, fol. 61a.
38. Ibid., fol. 64a. See Mauro Zonta, La filosofia antica nel Medioeuo ebraico (Paideia, Brescia,
1996), pp. 225-226.
39. The treatise appears after the colophon of R Yehonathan and may date from a later
period.
40. Michele Dukan, "Menahem B. Benjamin, scribe et savant juif italien de la fin du
XHIeme siecle," Italia 9:1-2 (1990), pp. 19-61, especially pp. 36-37.
41. Ibid., p. 36.
42. On this anonymous book see Dan, The Esoteric Theology, pp. 143-156; Idel, Golem,
pp. 86-91; and Gerold Necker, Das Buch des Lebens (Mohr/Siebeck, Tubingen, 2001).
43. Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390, fols. 2ga-64b.
44. See Dukan, "Menahem B. Benjamin," pp. 32-33.
45. Ibid. See also Ms. London, British Library 756, copied by R. Yehonathan ben Aviezer,
which starts with excerpts from Nahmanides' Commentary on the Pentateuch. On this
figure see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 50-51.
46. Dukan, "Menahem B. Benjamin," pp. 27-32.
47. See Abulafia, Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, fols. i64a-b, quoted in chap. 2, sec. 2.
48. Dukan is cautious about identifying this Kabbalist with the copyist Menahem ben
Benjamin. See "Menahem B. Benjamin," pp. 36-46.
49. A quotation from Nahmanides' treatise, without attribution, is found in Recanati's
Commentary on theTorah, fol. 68d. See also Scholem, Peraqim, pp. 92-97.
50. See, e.g., Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 55, 57-58. Cf. the presentation of my position in
Malachi Beit-Arie, "The Identity of the Kabbalist Menahem Recanati," Tarbitz 67
(1998), pp. 573-577 (Hebrew); and, following him, Giulio Busi, "Menahem Finzi
of Recanati: The True Name of an Old Acquaintance," Materia Giudaica 8:1 (2003),
pp. 213-218. To the best of my knowledge, I have never claimed that Menahem
Recanati's kabbalistic thought was based upon the kabbalistic material extant in the
manuscripts described above, but rather that they are the first dated codexes reflecting
the arrival of Kabbalah in the Italian peninsula. The claim of Bet-Arie, echoed by Busi,
that there were two approximately contemporary Italian Kabbalists who were inter-
ested in Kabbalah and in Halakhah, is an interesting suggestion that may help to solve
some problems that I cannot discuss here, but it assumes the existence of two
Kabbalists with the same name, in a period and region in which almost no other
known Kabbalists are documented. I hope to return to this issue elsewhere. Even if Bet
Arie is correct and there were two Kabbalists with the same name, the importance of
the kabbalistic material found in Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390, is not diminished: in fact
•375-
Notes to Pages 98-100
even Recanati could have read and used it despite the possibility that the copyist had
the same name.
51. On this treatise see Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 322 n. 250.
52. Ta'amei ha-MitziDot, fol. 18b; and Recanati, Commentary on theTorah, fol. 23c.
53. See the critical edition of Joseph Baruch Sermoneta, Sefer Taamulei ha-Nefesh (Israeli
Academy, Jerusalem, 1981); see index, e.g., p. 269, s.v. Ramban.
54. On Zerahyah's critique of Nahmanides see a study by Aviezer Ravitzky in preparation
and also chap. 12 of this volume.
55. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 88-89.
56. On the contacts between Jewish and Christian scholars in thirteenth-century Italy see
the various and important studies of J. B. Sermoneta, e.g., "Jehudah ben Mosheh ben
Daniel Romano, traducteur de Saint Thomas," in Homma^e a Georges Vajda, ed.
G. Nahon and C. Touati (Peeters, Louvain, 1980), pp. 235-262; and of Caterina Rigo,
e.g., "The Essence of Man and Immortality in the Philosophical Thought of
R. Yehudah Romano," in Joseph Baruch Sermoneta Memorial Volume, ed. Aviezer Ravitzky
(Institute for Jewish Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 181-221
(Hebrew). For a general survey of Jewish culture in Rome in the period under scrutiny
here, still valuable is the study by Hermann Vogelstein and Paul Rieger, Geschichte des
Juden in Rom, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1896), pp. 259-299.
57. See Zonta, La jtlosojia antica, pp. 223-224; and Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic
Interpretations," p. 238 n. 177.
58. See Rigo, "The Essence of Man and Immortality," p. 189 n. 25, pointing out that a
treatise attributed to Egidio Romano is extant only in a Hebrew translation by Yehudah
Romano, preserved in a Florentine manuscript.
59. See Giuseppe Sermoneta, "Rabbi Yehudah and Immanuel of Rome: Rationalism Whose
End Is Mystical Belief," in Sermoneta, Reuelarion, Faith, Reason (Bar Dan University Press,
Ramat Gan, 1976) pp. 54-70 (Hebrew); and idem, "Jehudah ben Mosheh ben Daniel
Romano," p. 246. The identification between sefirot and ideas, which entails a more
static vision of the sefirot than those found in the various forms of theosophical-theur-
gical Kabbalah, remained part of the Italian intellectual tradition; we find similar views
in R. David Messer Leon, in a book by Isaac Abravanel written in Italy; in Abraham
Yagel; and in Azariah de Rossi. On this issue see Moshe Idel, "Jewish Kabbalah and
Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance," in Neopiatonism and Jewish Thought, ed.
Lenn E. Goodman (SUNY Press, Albany, 1993), pp. 331-338; and Alemanno's passages
dealing with sefirot as numbers in chap. 14, sec. 2, of this volume.
60. See Abrams, "R Eleazar ha-Darshan's Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah."
61. For descriptions of the content of this manuscript see A. di Capua, Catalo^o dei codici
ebraici delta Biblioteca Angelica (Rome, 1878), pp. 95-97. For the use of Heikhalot mate-
rial in these writings, see the list made by Klaus Herrmann, Massekhet Hekhalot (Mohr/
Siebeck, Tubingen, 1994), pp. 57-60.
62. Most of the material has been printed and analyzed by Scholem, Reshit ha-Qabbalah,
pp. 195-238, and translated into English with some discussions in Dan, The "Unique
•376-
Notes to Pages 100-102
Cherub" Circle, pp. 241-251. More pertinent material and a more adequate edition of
part of the material is found in Daniel Abrams, "The 'Unity of God' of R. Eleazar
ha-Darshan," Qobez 'al Yad 12 (1994), pp. 149-160 (Hebrew).
63 . The text is printed in Joseph Dan, Studies in Ashkenazi-Hasidic Literature (Massada, Ramat
Gan, 1975), pp. 112-133 (Hebrew); and discussed again in idem, The "Unique
Cherub" Circle.
64. See Scholem, Reshit ha-Qabbalah, pp. 201, 207.
65. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, p. 118; idem, Messianic Mystics, pp. 85-86; idem, Ben,
pp. 276-506.
66. For more on these occurrences see Idel, Ben, pp. 377-506. For more on the affinities
between Abulafia and material related, in my opinion, to R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo as
found in Ms. London, British Library 752, see ibid., pp. 350-351 n. 52. 1 assume that
material in that manuscript was also known in Rome in the late 1270s. This view has
nothing to do with the theory of Israel Weinstock that the material (which I attribute
to R. Nehemiah) originated with Abu Aharon in Babylon, since I assume that the
sources reached the copyist of this manuscript from Erfurt and not from Baghdad. See
Weinstock, "The Discovery of Abu Aharon of Baghdad's Legacy of Secrets," Tarbitz 32
(1963), pp. 153-159 (Hebrew); Gershom Scholem, "Has Abu Aharon's Legacy of
Secrets Been Discovered?," ibid., pp. 252-265 (Hebrew); and the rejoinder of
Weinstock, "The Treasury of 'Secrets' of Abu Aharon — Imagination or Reality?," Sinai
54 (1964), pp. 226-259. See also below, note 71.
67. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 100-101.
68. See the untitled text printed in Scholem, Reshit ha-Qabbalah, p. 222; and Abulafia's
similar views. See Idel, Kabbalah: Neu> Perspectiues, p. 169.
69. See above, chap. 6, note 23.
70. For more on this issue see Idel, Ben, pp. 276-506.
71. See Abrams, "The 'Unity of God' of R. Eleazar ha-Darshan," pp. 152-153. Whether
this student was R. Jacob ha-Levi of Ozenburg, a student of R Eleazar himself, cannot
be ascertained; see ibid., p. 152 n. 18. The question is whether this student was the
copyist of Ms. London, British Library 752, which contains material from R. Moshe
Azriel. See Scholem, Reshit ha-Qabbalah, p. 207; and note 66 above.
72. Abrams, "The 'Unity of God' of R. Eleazar ha-Darshan," pp. 153-154.
73. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 221-222. For another Ashkenazi figure, R. Yehi'el,
involved in selling manuscripts to R Menahem ben Benjamin, see ibid., p. 119. See
also ibid., pp. 116-117. See also Idel, Golem, p. 280 n. 7, about the arrival of material on
the Golem from the Ashkenazi lands via Venice; and chap. 20 of this volume.
74. See also other Ashkenazi material found in Italian manuscripts connected to Recanati,
described in Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 72-75.
75. See chap. 12, sec. 2, and the end of chap. 22 on the similarity between Rome in this
period and Florence at the end of the fifteenth century.
76. See, e.g., the story by Immanuel of Rome about the arrival of scores of books from
Toledo, discussed in Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 59-60.
•377-
Notes to Pages 102-104
77. See Miguel Asin Palacios, La escatoloaia musulmana en la Divina commedia, 2nd ed.
(Hisperion, Madrid, 1984); E. Cerulli, II "Libra' de la scalla" e la questions delejfonti arabo-
spagnole della Diuina commedia (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City, 1949);
idem, Nuoue ricerche sul "Libro della Scalla" e la cognoscenza dell'Islam in occidente (Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City, 1972), especially pp. 12-13; Carlo Saccone, "II
'Mi'raj' di Maometto: Una leggenda tra Oriente e Occidente," in II libro della Scala di
Maometto, ed. and trans. Roberto R. Testa (Mondadori, Milan, 1991); and Geo
Widengren, Muhammad, the Apostle oJGod, and His Ascension (Lundequistska bokhan-
deln Uppsala, Wiesbaden, 1955), pp. 11-112. See also Robert Klein, Form and Meaning:
Writings on the Renaissance and Modern Art, trans. Madeline Jay and Leon Wieseltier
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1979), pp. 62-85.
78. On the possibility that Jewish material stemming from Heikhalot literature influenced
Libro della scala, see Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History ofthejeujs, vol. 8 (Columbia
University Press, New York, 1958), p. 285 n. 23; and loan P. Couliano, Expe'riences de
1'extase: Extase, ascension et recit uisionaire de 1'Hellenisme au Moyen Age (Payot, Paris, 1984),
pp. 164-172. See also David J. Halperin, "Hekhalot and Mi'raj: Observations on the
Heavenly Journey in Judaism and Islam, " in Death , Ecstasy , and Other Worldly Journeys, ed.
John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane (SUNY Press, Albany, 1995), pp. 269-288; Idel,
"The Concept of the Torah," pp. 46-47 n. 68; and idem, Ascensions on High, p. 132.
79. See Herrmann, Massekhet Hekhalot. For the extensive acquaintance with the Heikhalot
literature apparent in R. Menahem Recanati's books see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati,
i: 119-120.
80. On the kabbalistic epistle and the type of kabbalistic literature to which it belongs
see Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 309-364 and especially pp. 349-352 for the
content of the epistle.
81. From here to the end of the passage the language shifts from Hebrew to Aramaic.
82. Ms. Jerusalem, National and University Library 195 9, fol. 207a. See also the much later
eighteenth-century Moroccan codex New York, JTS 1805, which contains this version,
as mediated by another Moroccan book, R Joseph al-Ashqar's Tzajhat Pa'aneah. On a
different version of this passage, which does not mention the Moroccan sage, see
Amos Goldreich, ed., "R Isaac of Acre's Me'irat 'Einayyim" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew
University, Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 56 and 402-403 (Hebrew). For other attributions of
kabbalistic material to R. Hai Gaon see Elliot R. Wolfson, "Hai Gaon's Letter and
Commentary on 'Aleynu': Further Evidence of Moses de Leon's Pseudepigraphic
Activity," Jewish Quarterly Reuieui 81 (1991), pp. 365-409. For the role of astronomy in
early Kabbalah see Ronald Kiener, "Astrology in Jewish Mysticism from Sefer Yezira
to the Zohar," in The Beginnings o/Jeuush Mysticism in Medieual Europe, ed. J. Dan (Institute
for Jewish Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 1-42.
83. See Idel, "Maimonides' Guide ofthe Perplexed," pp. 197-199.
84. See Benjamin Richler, "The Dispersion of Medieval Jewish Manuscripts and Its
Significance for Understanding the Phenomenon of Hebrew membra disiecta," in
"Fragmenta ne pereant": Recupero e studio dei jrammenti di manoscritti medieuali e rinascimentali
•378-
Notes to Pages 107-112
riutilizatti in legature, ed. Mauro Perani and Cesarino Ruini (Longo Editore, Ravenna,
2000), pp. 75-83.
Chapter 8: R. Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati
1. On the term "Kabbalah" see Scholem, Kabbalah, pp. 3-7; Idel, "Defining Kabbalah"
and "On the Meanings of the Term 'Kabbalah,' " pp. 69-73.
2. Scholem, Major Trends, p. 13.
3. Ibid., pp. 10— 11. This triad reflects Franz Rosenzweig's three major religious events in
his book Star of Redemption, trans. Barbara E. Galli (University of Wisconsin Press,
Madison, 2005).
4. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, Lawyer and Mystic (JPS, Philadelphia, 1977), p. 40;
cf. ibid., pp. 158-159.
5. Tishby, The Wisdom ojthe Zohar, 1: 236.
6. See, e.g., Scholem, On the Kabbalah, pp. 98-100; idem, Kabbalah, pp. 122-128; and
Isaiah Tishby, The Doctrine oJEvil in the Lurianic Doctrine (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1942),
p. 16 (Hebrew).
7. See Gershom Scholem, KabbalotR. Ya'akou ue-Yitzhaq ha-Kohen (Ha-Madpis, Jerusalem,
1927), p. 31.
8. Tishby, The Doctrine oJEuil, p. 16.
9. Idem, "Gnostic Doctrines in Sixteenth-Century Jewish Mysticism," Journal ojjeiuish
Studies 6 (1955), p. 146.
10. On this issue see Idel, Kabbalah: Neu> Perspectiues, pp. 260-264; an d idem, "On the
Theologization of Kabbalah in Modern Scholarship," in Religious Apologetics:
Philosophical Argumentation, ed. Y. Schwartz and V. Krech (J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen,
2004), pp. 123-174.
n. See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 73-90.
12. For a detailed analysis of the two quotations see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 66-68.
13. See Tishby, The Wisdom ojthe Zohar, 1: 13-18.
14. See Daniel Ch. Matt, The Book oJMirrors: Sefer Mar'ot ha-Zoue'ot by R. David ben Yehudah
he-Hasid (Brown Judaic Studies, Scholars Press, Chico, Calif, 1982), pp. 13-17.
15. See Scholem, Kabbalah, pp. 213, 236; Tishby, The Wisdom ojthe Zohar, 1: 21, 23. On the
early reception of the Zohar see now Boaz Huss, "Like the Radiance ojthe Sky": Chapters in
the Reception History ojthe Zohar and the Construction ojlts Symbolic Value (Ben Zvi Institute
and Bialik Institute, Jerusalem, 2008) (Hebrew).
16. For Recanati's use of Castilian sources see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 95-107.
17. See chap. 10 for an analysis of Recanati's discussion of the correspondence between
the sefirotic realm and the human body.
18. The first edition is Venice 1523.
19. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 2: chap. 23.
20. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 20-56, 62-64, I 56-i59, 204-208.
21. Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 2: chap. 23.
22. For a description of this book see ibid., 1: 72-73.
•379-
Notes to Pages 113-116
23. Ibid., p. 79.
24. See ibid., pp. 73-78.
25. See ibid., pp. 69-70.
26. See ibid., pp. 80-81.
27. See the detailed discussion in ibid., app. 5.
28. See, e.g., Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fol. 24a.
29. Or "understood this."
30. R. Menahem Recanati, SeferTa'amei ha-Mitzu>ot, Ms. Paris, BN 825, fol. 45a, printed in
Hayyat, Minhat Yehudah, fol. 33b.
31. Ms. Paris, BN 825, fols. 37b-38a.
32. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 151-153.
33. Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 4.
34. Recanati, SeferTa'amei ha-Mitziuot, Ms. Paris, BN 825, fol. 54b.
35. Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fol. 38b.
36. On this issue see Georges Vajda, Recherches sur la philosophic et la Kabbale dans la pense'e
juive du Moyen Age (Mouton, Paris, 1962), pp. 371-378; and Moshe Idel, "Nishmat
'Eloha: On the Divinity of the Soul in Nahmanides and His Schools," in Life as a Midrash:
Perspectives in Jewish Psychology, ed. S. Arzy, M. Fachler, and B. Kahana (Yediy'ot
Aharonot, Tel Aviv, 2004), pp. 343-345 (Hebrew).
37. See Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fols. 38b and 77c.
38. See R. Ezra, Perush ha-'Aggadot, printed in Liqqutei Shilcehah u-Fe'ah (Ferrara, 1556),
fols. 7b-8a; and R. Azriel's Perush ha-'Aggadot, ed. I. Tishby (Magnes Press, Jerusalem,
1945), p. 40.
39. Recanati's discussions on this point are influenced by R. Yehudah Hayyat's Minhat
Yehudah, fols. 95a-g6b.
40. On Abulafia, deuequt, and the kiss of death see chap. 4.
41. Namely before their eyes. Compare also Recanati, Commentary on the Torah,
fols. 37d, 38b.
42. Ibid., fol. 37d, drawing upon the sources cited in note 38 above. This passage already
appears with minor variations in Recanati's Ta'amei ha-Mitziuot, Ms. Vatican 209,
fol. 28a. On this passage and its background see Wolfson, Through a Speculum,
pp. 296-301, who offers a somewhat different interpretation.
43. For more on this passage, its sources and their analysis, see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati,
i: 128-133. Recently this passage was analyzed by Haviva Pedaya, who claims to detect
in it Sufi influences, and understands it as a description of an ecstatic experience. See
her "Ahuzim be-Dibbur: For the Clarification of a Prophetic-Ecstatic Type in Early
Kabbalah," Tarbitz 65 (1996), pp. 565-636 (Hebrew). I hope to do a more detailed
analysis elsewhere. See meanwhile a different view of this text in Idel, "The Kabbalistic
Interpretations of the Secret of Arayyot in Early Kabbalah," Kabbalah 12 (2004), p. 106
n. 89 (Hebrew).
44. For more on this model see Idel, Hasidism, pp. 95-102.
45. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 2: chap. 22.
•380-
Notes to Pages 116-119
46. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 153-160; Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the
Renaissance, pp. 155-156; Frangois Secret, Les Kabbalistes chre'tiens de la Renaissance (Arena
Artis, Neuilly sur Seine, 1985), pp. 39-40; B. C. Novak, "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
and Johanan Alemanno,"JWCl45 (1982), pp. 140-144.
47. See the untitled text in Ms. Rome, Casanatense 179, fol. 134a; and Ms. Vatican 295, fol.
107a. Recanati cites the passage without attribution in Commentary on the Torah, fol. 90c,
and from that source R. Yehudah Hayyat copied it in his Minhat Yehudah, fols. 95b-g6a.
Chapter 9: Menahem Recanati as a
Theosophical-Theurgical Kabbalist
1. See Moshe Idel, "Nahmanides: Kabbalah, Halakhah, and Spiritual Leadership,"
Tarbitz 64 (1995), p. 545 n. 43 (Hebrew); for an English-language version of this study
see M. Idel and M. Ostow, eds., Jeurish Mystical Leaders and Leadership (Jason Aronson,
Northvale, N.J., 1998), pp. 15-96. On the early kabbalistic theosophies see Scholem,
Origins ojthe Kabbalah. On Yitzhaq Sagi Nahor see Haviva Pedaya, Name and Sanctuary in
the Teaching oJR. Isaac the Blind (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2001) (Hebrew).
2. Moshe Idel, "Sefirot above Sefirot," Tarbitz 51 (1982), pp. 278-280 (Hebrew).
3. On this author see J. B. Sermoneta, "II neo-platonismo nel pensiero dei nuclei ebraici
stanziati nell'Occidente latino (rifflesioni sul 'Commento al Libro della Creazione' di
Rabbi Sabbetai Donnolo)," Gli Ebrei nell'alto Medieuo 2 (1980), pp. 867-935.
4. Elliot R. Wolfson, "The Theosophy of Shabbetai Donnolo, with Special Emphasis on
the Doctrine of Sefirot in His SeferHakhmoni," Jeurish History 6 (1992), pp. 281-316.
5. See Scholem, Origins ojthe Kabbalah, pp. 431-444. For another historical description of
the emergence of the kabbalistic term for Infinity, see Moshe Idel, "On the Doctrine of
Divinity at the Beginning of Kabbalah," in Shefa Tal: Studies in Jeurish Thought and Culture,
Presented to Bracha Sack, ed. Z. Gries, Ch. Kreisel, and B. Huss (Ben Gurion University
Press, Beer Sheva, 2004), pp. 131-148 (Hebrew).
6. R. Azriel, Perush ha-Aggadot, ed. I. Tishby (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1945), p. 83. For
more on this concept see Moshe Idel, "Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle
Ages and Renaissance," in Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, ed. Lenn E. Goodman
(SUNY Press, Albany, 1993), pp. 326-327.
7. Azriel, Perush ha-'Aggadot, pp. 82-83.
8. See Alexander Altmann, "Isaac Israeli's 'Chapter on the Elements' (Ms. Mantua),"
Journal o/Jeiuish Studies 7 (1956), pp. 31-57.
9. See Scholem, Origins ojthe Kabbalah, pp. 418, 436-439. The emergence of the theory of
the divine will as the highest divine manifestation in the works of these two Kabbalists,
and to a lesser degree in those of R. Asher ben David, the nephew of R. Isaac the Blind,
preceded a similar phenomenon in the writings of R. Isaac ben Abraham ibn Latif,
who seems to have been influenced not only by Neoplatonic sources, such as Ibn
Gabirol, but also by early kabbalistic views and by Ismailism.
10. See R. Azriel's Sha'ar ha-Sho'el, in Meir ibn Gabbai's Derekh 'Emunah (Berlin, 1850),
fol. 3a. On the early kabbalistic views of the spiritual worlds see Scholem's important
•381-
Notes to Pages 119-123
essay "The Development of the Doctrine of the Worlds in the Early Kabbalists," Tarbitz
2 (1931), pp. 415-442; ibid., 3 (1932), pp. 33-66 (Hebrew),
n. Ibid., pp. 416-417.
12. See R. Azriel, Sha'ar ha-Sho'el, Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390, fols. 8b-i4b; and Idel,
R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 90-92.
13. For details on the manuscripts and different versions see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati,
i: 195-209.
14. On this form of theosophy see Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 1: 239-246.
15. See, e.g., Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 93-94, 147-148.
16. See Moshe Idel, "On the Concept of Zimzum in Kabbalah and Its Research," in Lurianic
Kabbalah, ed. Rachel Elior and Yehuda Liebes (Jewish National Library, Jerusalem,
1992), pp. 65-66 (Hebrew).
17. The systems that were inclined to an essentialist view of the sefirot were concerned
more with intradivine processes: the unification between the sefirot or the separation
between them. However, in the instrumental concepts, the divine nature of the sefirot
had been substantially attenuated, and in addition to the intradivine processes the
drawing down of the influx from the sefirotic world to the subsefirotic ones became
part of explicit discussions. This religious purpose will preoccupy us much more in
the following chapters, as it represents the third major kabbalistic model, the magical
or talismanic one.
18. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 187-188.
19. See above, chap. 3, sec. 3.
20. Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of All Heresies, Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 6
(Edinburgh, 1968), p. 320. For more on the issue of commandments and knowledge
of the supernal world see the next chapter.
21. Pesiqta' Rabbati, ed. M. Friedmann (1880; reprint, Tel Aviv, 1963), fols. 6o8a-b; Midrash
Tadshe', in Abraham Epstein, Kadmonyot ha-Yehudim (Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem,
1957), pp. 147-148, 155; Azriel, Anujat ha-Bosem, 1: 219 n. 10.
22. Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of All Heresies, p. 319: "And it [tittle] comprises in itself
whatever things the man also possesses [who is] the Father of the Son of Man." Hence
the titde, which is the Son, contains whatever is found in his source, wherefore also
his decadic nature. For more on Monoimos see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 241-245;
and idem, Ben, pp. 15, 31, 121.
23. C. A. Baynes, ed., A Coptic Gnostic Treatise (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1933), p. 17.
24. Ibid., p. 18.
25. See Scholem, Major Trends, p. 365 n. 89; M. Idel, "The Image of Man above the Sefirot:
R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid's Doctrine of the Supernal Sefirot [Tzahtzahot] and Its
Evolution," Da'at 4 (1980), pp. 46-47 (Hebrew); Arthur Green, Keter: The Croum oJGod
in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997), pp. 30-31.
26. muslckalot ha-kelulim be-mitzvot. On the use of the term muslclcalot in a theosophical
context see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 115-118.
•382-
Notes to Pages 123-126
27. R. Shlomo ibn Adret, Seder Amran Goon, ed. Arieh Leib Fromkin (S. Tsukerman,
Jerusalem, 1912), p. 79. For more on Merkauah see chap. 10 of this volume.
28. Ta'amei ha-Mitziuot, fols. 2a-b.
29. Ibid., fol. 2b.
30. See Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 80; Isaiah Tishby, Paths of Faith and Heresy
(Massada, Ramat Gan, 1964), p. 25 (Hebrew); idem, The Wisdom ojthe Zohar, 2: 684;
Gottlieb, Studies, p. 29. For an analysis of theurgy in rabbinic sources see Idel, Kabbalah:
New Perspectiues, pp. 161, 357; Lorberbaum, Image of God, pp. 156-169; and Garb,
Manifestations of Power, pp. 28-46.
31. Mircea Eliade, Traite' d'histoire des religions (Payot, Paris, 1949), p. 22; idem,
"Methodological Remarks on the Study of Religious Symbolism," in The History of
Religions: Essays in Methodology, ed. Eliade and J. M. Kitagawa (University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1959), p. 98; Joachim Wach, The Comparatiue Study of Religions, ed.
J. M. Kitagawa (Columbia University Press, New York, 1961), p. 63.
32. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (Pantheon, New York, 1982),
pp. 11-12.
33. See Idel, Kabbalah: Neiu Perspectiues, pp. 156-199; Charles Mopsik, Les grands textes de la
Kabbale (Verdier, Lagrasse, 1993); Lorberbaum, Image oJGod, pp. 156-169; and Garb,
Manifestations of Pouier, passim.
34. Idel, Kabbalah: Neiu Perspectiues, pp. xiii-xiv.
35. BT, Sotah, fol. 3b. The fuller text, including the bracketed material, is Isaiah 58:8.
36. See R Ezra, Commentary on Taryag Mizuot, printed at the end of the Commentary on Songs
of Songs, attributed to Nahmanides, in Kituei ha-Ramban, ed. H. D. Chavel, vol. 2
(Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1964), p. 524. For more on this text see M. Idel, "In
the Light of Life," in Qeddushat ha-Hayyim, ed. Y. Gafni and A. Ravitzky (Merkaz
Shazar, Jerusalem, 1993), pp. 191-211, especially pp. 193-194 and the notes there
(Hebrew). For more on the ontologization of the commandments, prayer, the divine
name, and the Torah see Idel, Enchanted Chains, passim.
37. The Hebrew phrase is 'Or ha-Hayyim; Tishby, The Wisdom ojthe Zohar, 3: 1158, quotes this
text and adds here, in parentheses, the phrase "of the divine sefirah," projecting by this
addition, in my opinion both unnecessary and misleadingly, the importance of the per-
formance from here below on the supernal realm. This superfluous addition stems from
Tishby's assumption of the unique importance of the theosophical-symbolic interpreta-
tion. For the importance of performance in Recanati see also chap. 10 of this volume.
38. Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fol. 23c. This passage is found in the passage from
R Ezra of Gerona copied in Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390, fol. 4b, described in chap. 7,
and it may be that Recanati copied it from there. For more on Recanati's theurgy
see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 2: chaps. 12-13; Mopsik, Les grands textes de la Kabbale,
pp. 278-287, 368-371, 590-592; and Garb, Manifestations oJPoiuer, pp. 117-121.
39. Ta'amei ha-Mitziuot, fol. 13c.
40. Ibid., fol. 18a.
41. Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fol. 51b.
•383-
Notes to Pages 126-131
42. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 186.
43. Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fol. 69c.
44. Ta'amei ha-Mitziuot, fol. 65a.
45. On the supernal Demut, namely image, in ancient Jewish texts, see Abraham J. Heschel,
Theology of Ancient Judaism, vol. 1 (Soncino, London, 1965), pp. 155, 220-223;
Lorberbaum, Image o_f God, pp. 293-294, 301-314.
46. Introduction to Recanati's Ta'amei ha-Mitziuot, fol. 3c. See also Scholem, On the
Kabbalah, pp. 124-125.
47. Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fols. 23b-c, discussed in Idel, "The Concept of
the Torah," pp. 68-70. Compare Recanati, ibid., fol. 43c, where, following the Bahir,
he asserts: "all the commandments are comprised in God."
48. Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fol. 51b.
49. Ibid., fols. 7id~72a.
50. Ibid., fol. 43c. For more on prayer and theurgy in Recanati see Idel, R. Menahem
Recanati, 2: chap. 13.
51. See Daniel Abrams, " 'The Secret of Secrets': The Concept of the Divine Glory and the
Intention of Prayer in the Writings of R. Eleazar of Worms," Da'at 34 (1994), pp. 61-81
(Hebrew).
52. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 221-222. Abulafia, Recanati, and Alemanno had sub-
stantial knowledge of Ashkenazi literature, as part of the penetration of Ashkenazi
culture into the peninsula.
53. See M. Idel, "Ashkenazi Esotericism and Kabbalah in Barcelona," Hispania Judaica 5
(2007), pp. 69-113.
Chapter 10: Menahem Recanatps Hermeneutics
1. Ta'amei ha-Mitzu!ot, fol. 2a. See also Daniel Matt, "The Mystic and the Mitzvot," in
Jeuush Spirituality, ed. Arthur Green, vol. 1 (Crossroad, New York, 1986), p. 392.
2. I ignore here the existence of the school of Abulafia in Sicily, because Recanati
certainly did not study there.
3. Isaiah Tishby, Paths oJFaith and Heresy (Massada, Ramat Gan, 1964), p. 14 (Hebrew).
4. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 2.
5. Ibid. See also another assertion to this effect: "The magnitude of the messianic idea
corresponds to the endless powerlessness in Jewish history during all the centuries
of exile"; idem, The Messianic Idea in Israel (Schocken, New York, 1971), p. 35; and ibid.,
p. 7; as well as his Major Trends, pp. 287-288.
6. See Avraham Elqayam, "Between Referentialism and Performativism: Two Approaches
to the Understanding of the Symbol in Sejer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut," Da'at 24 (1990),
pp. 29-37 (Hebrew); Boaz Huss, "R. Joseph Gikatilla's Definition of Symbolism
and Its Versions in Kabbalistic Literature," Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 12 (1996),
pp. 157-176 (Hebrew).
7. On primary and secondary symbols see Peter Slater, The Dynamics oJReligion (Harper
and Row, New York, 1978), pp. 29 ff.
•384-
Notes to Pages 132-133
8. For a bibliography on ancient views of God as rider see Moshe Weinfeld, " 'Rider of
the Clouds' and 'Gatherer of the Clouds,' " Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of
Columbia University 5 (1973), pp. 421-426. On ancient traditions describing the first
chapter of Ezekiel as an esoteric topic see N. R. M. de Lange, Orujen and the Jeu>s
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1976), p. 60. On the Merkavah in Jewish
mysticism see Scholem, Kabbalah, pp. 8-21; Lawrence Schiffman, "Merkavah
Speculation at Qumran: The 4Q Serekh Shirot 'Olat ha-Shabbat," in Mystics, Philosophers,
and Politicians: Essays in Intellectual History in Honor of Alexander Altmann, ed. Jehuda
Reinharz and Daniel Swetschinski with Kalman P. Bland (Duke University Press,
Durham, 1982), pp. 34-45; Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism
(Brill, Leiden, 1980), pp. 73-97; Peter Schaefer, Hekhalot Studien (J. C. B. Mohr,
Tubingen, 1988), pp. 17-49; Wei, The Mystical Experience, pp. 14-16; Michael Lieb, The
Visionary Mode: Biblical Prophecy, Hermeneutics, and Cultural Changes (Cornell University
Press, Ithaca, 1991); David Halperin, The Merkauah in Rabbinic Literature (American
Oriental Society, New Haven, 1980); idem, The Faces of the Chariot (J. C. B. Mohr,
Tubingen, 1988). On the Mesopotamian background of Ma'aseh Merkavah as repre-
sented by the first chapter of Ezekiel see Moshe Weinfeld, "Divine Intervention in War
in Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East, " in History , Historiography , and Interpretation:
Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literatures, ed. H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld (Magnes
Press, Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 142-143 n. 119; and Moshe Greenberg, "Ezekiel's Vision:
Literary and Iconographic Aspects," ibid., pp. 159-168.
9. Ta'amei ha-Mitzivot, printed in Hayyat, Minhat Yehudah, fol. 35a.
10. R. Menahem Recanati, Commentary on Prayer, Ms. New York, JTS 1887, fol. 156b.
n. Ibid., fol. 157a.
12. See Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 3 : 549-621. On the Account of the Chariot in early
Kabbalah see the very important and comprehensive study by Asi Farber-Ginat, "The
Concept of the Merkavah in Thirteenth-Century Jewish Esotericism" (Ph.D. diss.,
Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1986) (Hebrew); Elliot Wolfson, "Mystical-Theurgical
Dimensions of Prayer in Sefer ha-Rimmon," in Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, ed.
D. R. Blumenthal, vol. 3 (Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1988), p. 74 n. 131. The further devel-
opment of kabbalistic theosophy, which implicidy means also the understanding of
the Merkavah as a very complex system, especially in the Lurianic Kabbalah, has led
modern scholars to see the Kabbalists as being more involved with speculations con-
cerning the nature of the Chariot while ignoring the rider of the Chariot; see Sabbatai
Sevi's description of the Lurianic Kabbalah according to Scholem, Sabbatai Sew,
p. 904; and Yehuda Liebes, "The Attitude of Sabbatai Zevi to His Conversion," Sefunot,
n.s. 2 (= vol. 17, ed. J. Hacker [Makhon ben Tzvi, Jerusalem]) (1983), p. 290 (Hebrew).
13. On this theory of the emergence of the historical Kabbalah in general see Idel,
"Maimonides and Kabbalah," pp. 32-50.
14. See Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 205-206.
15. On these two kinds of relation see Umberto Eco, ATheory oJSemiotics (Indiana University
Press, Bloomington, 1979), pp. 183-187, 217-260. On how Eco's views lead to better
•385-
Notes to Pages 133-137
understanding of kabbalistic scriptural symbolism see Idel, Absorbing Perfections,
pp. 280-289.
16. See Gershom Scholem, "The Name of God and the Linguistic of the Kabbalah,"
Diogenes 79 (1972), pp. 60, 62, 165, 193; idem, On the Kabbalah., p. 36; Tishby, Paths of
Faith and Heresy, pp. 11-22. For more on Scholem's view of the kabbalistic symbol
see Susan A. Handelman, Fragments of Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in
Benjamin, Scholem, and Levinas (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1991),
pp. 83-84, 93-114; and Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 200-234. F° r me possible
Renaissance sources of Scholem's pansymbolic approach see my introduction to
Reuchlin, On the Art ojthe Kabbalah, pp. xv-xvi. Both Scholem and Ernst Cassirer, who
contributed so much to the modern understanding of symbolism, emphasized the
role of the symbolic aspect of language more than the magical aspect. One wonders if
their preference for the symbolic mode reflects their Hegelian stance.
17. The original deuarim means, literally, "things."
18. Ta'amei ha-Mitzwot, fol. 2b. See also the quotation from ibid., fol. 3a, later in this
chapter.
19. Ibid., fol. 2a.
20. Ibid., fol. 21b.
21. Ibid., fol. 61c.
22. Ibid., fol. 4c.
23. See R. Shem Tov ibn Gaon's Sefer Keter Shem Tou, Ms. Paris, BN 774, fols. y6sL-b.
See also Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 88-93.
24. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 331-332 n. 45.
25. Moshe Idel, "The World of Angels in Human Shape," in Jerusalem Studies in Jewish
Thought = Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah
Tishby, ed. Joseph Dan and Joseph Hacker (Institute for Jewish Studies, Hebrew
University, Jerusalem, 1986), p. 31 (Hebrew); and now Idel, The Angelic World, p. 26.
26. For details on this view of Gikatilla, which is copied by Recanati, see Huss, "R. Joseph
Gikatilla's Definition of Symbolism."
27. See the important study of Alexander Altmann, "The Delphic Maxim in Medieval
Islam and Judaism," in his Von der Mittelalterlichen zur Modernen Aufkldrung: Studien zur
Jiidischen Geistgeschichte (J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 1987), pp. 1-33.
28. Despite the more formalist, isomorphic, and thus anthropomorphic correspondences
between limbs, as seen in this and the previous chapters, Recanati shares Gikatilla's
view that the names of limbs should be understood as pointing to their function rather
than to their forms. For details on this trend see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 2: chap. 18.
29. See Tzvetan Todorov, Symbolisme et interpretation (Seuil, Paris 1978), pp. 128-131.
30. Ta'amei ha-Mitzwot, fol. 3a.
31. See ibid., fols. 2a-b; I have improved this version on the basis of the one found in Ms.
Paris, BN 825, fols. ib-2a. On this quotation see Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 44.
32. Gershom Scholem, available in English as "The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish
Mysticism," Diogenes 14 (1955), pp. 1-16; ibid., 15 (1956), pp. 2-40. For an easily
•386-
Notes to Pages 137-141
available reprint of the French translation see idem, Le nom et les symboles de Dieu dans la
mystiquejuive, trans. M. R. Hayoun and G. Vajda (Le Cerf, Paris, 1983), p. in.
33. Scholem, Le nom et les symboles de Dieu, p. in. For further references to this quotation
see Charles Mopsik, Les grands textes de la Kabbale (Verdier, Lagrasse, 1993), p. 27g;Idel,
"The Concept oftheTorah," pp. 58-62; idem, Kabbalah: Neu> Perspectiues, pp. 244-247;
Barbara A. Holdrege, Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture (SUNY Press,
Albany, 1996), pp. 200-201, 492, p. 334.
34. Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 87-88.
35. Jacques Derrida, Degrammatologie (Le Minuit, Paris, 1967), pp. 233, 227; translated by
G. C. Spivak as Of Grammatology (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1976),
pp. 163,158.
36. See Gershom Scholem, "New Remnants from the Writings of R. Azriel of Gerona," in
Gulalc and Klein Memorial Volume, ed. Simha Assaf and Gershom Scholem (Hebrew
University, Jerusalem, 1942), p. 207: Tin dauar hutz mimmenu. This phrase is characteris-
tic of R. Azriel's terminology, although it was more often related to the divine will
than to God. Derrida could have read either the German version in Scholem's fuller
description of the beginnings of Kabbalah, Ursprung und Anfange der Kabbala, printed in
Berlin in 1962, or in the French translation, titled Les origines de la Kabbale, trans. Jean
Loewenson (Aubier-Montaigne, Paris, 1966), p. 447: "rien n'existe hormis Lui." See
also the English version in Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 423-424: "Nothing exists outside
of Him."
37. In Recanati's writings, unlike those of R. Azriel, the concept of the divine will does not
play an important role.
Chapter 11: Ecstatic Kabbalah from the
Fourteenth through Mid-Fifteenth Centuries
1. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 2: app. 6. Interestingly, no Italian Kabbalists in the
period under scrutiny here wrote a commentary on Recanati's kabbalistic writings,
although they commented upon a Spanish treatise that expounded a theosophy
different from Recanati's.
2. See Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," pp. 69-74.
3. This treatise is extant in a single manuscript, Ms. Munich 10. On its authorship see
Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," pp. 72-74.
4. The treatise is found in two versions and in many manuscripts. See Idel, "Abraham
Abulafia," pp. 69-72.
5. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 220-221, 233-234; Fabrizio Lelli, "Pico tra
filosofia ebraica e 'Qabbala,'" in Pico, Poliziano e 1'umanesimo dijtne Quattrocento, ed.
Paolo Viti (Leo S. Olschki, Florence, 1994), pp. 207-208.
6. See M. Idel, "Transmission in the Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah," in Transmitting
Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, ed. Yaakov Elman and Israel
Gershoni (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000), pp. 138-164.
7. See above, chap. 2, sec. 2.
•387-
Notes to Pages 141-144
8. Qabbalah sikhlit. This view, characteristic of some of the innovative Kabbalists, was
reiterated by several Kabbalists, especially in the Renaissance and later,
g. Sefer ha-Tzeruf Ms. Paris, BN 770, fol. 175b.
10. See Harar, Sha'arei Tzedeq, pp. 418-420.
11. BT, Hagigah, fol. 14a.
12. The anonymous passage is found in Ms. Vatican 283, fol. 71b. This manuscript is the
only one in which the text has been preserved. For more on this passage see I. Tishby
in his preface to R. Azriel's Perush ha-'Aggadot, ed. Tishby (Magnes Press, Jerusalem,
1945), p. 19; and Moshe Idel, "An Interpretation of the Entrance into the Pardes at the
Beginning of Kabbalah," Mahanayyim 6 (1994), pp. 32-49 (Hebrew); and idem,
"Universalization and Integration: Two Conceptions of Mystical Union in Jewish
Mysticism," in Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue, ed. M. Idel
and B. McGinn (Continuum, New York, 1989), pp. 35-37.
13. This is the third of the Epistles o/the Brethren o/Purity, trans. Alexander Altmann and
Samuel Stern, in Isaac Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher o_f the Early Tenth Century (Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1958), p. 186.
14. Ms. Vatican, Urbino 31, fol. 164a; Ms. New York, JTS 839, fol. 5b. On the writings of
this circle see Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 309-364.
15. R. Isaac ibn Latif, Tzeror ha-Mor, chap. 6, printed by Aharon (Adolph) Jellinek in Kerem
Hemed 9 (1856), p. 157. Ibn Latif s stand influenced R Yohanan Alemanno, Sha'ar
ha-Hesheq (Livorno, 1790), fols. 35a-b; and idem, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana
2234, fol. 187a.
16. The Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction with the Active Intellect by Ibn Rushd uuth the
Commentary o_f Moses Narboni, ed. Kalman P. Bland (JTS, New York, 1982), p. 96. In his
Collectanea, fol. 30a, Alemanno cites Narboni.
17. See Recanati's discussion of the topic in chap. 8, sec. 3.
18. Sefer ha-Tzeruf, Ms. Munich 22, fol. 187a; Ms. New York, JTS 839, fols. io5b-io6a. For
a shorter version of this passage see Ms. Paris, BN 770, fol. 167b.
19. Sefer ha-Tzeruf Ms. Paris, BN 774, fol. 2b; the anonymous author of Sefer ha-Tzeruf uses
the image of the circle on fols. 2a, 6b. For a combination of the image of the ladder
with that of the circle — some form of mandala — see a passage found in a prophetic
book by Abulafia, Sefer ha-Melitz, translated and analyzed in Idel, The Mystical Experience,
pp. 108-111.
20. On the relationship between the two concepts, see Colette Sirat, Mar'ot 'Elohim le-Rabbi
Hanolch ben Shelomo al-Qonstantini (Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 16-17; and the talmudic
discussion of the light concealed for the righteous in BT, Hagiggah, fol. 12a.
21. The anonymous Sefer ha-Peliy'ah (Koretz, 1788), fol. 106b.
22. See Moshe Idel, "Sefirot above Sefirot," Tarbitz 51 (1982), pp. 260-262 (Hebrew).
23. Ms. Vatican 441, fol. 34b in the margin. The various materials found in this
miscellaneous manuscript are an important source for understanding the extent of
the knowledge of Kabbalah in Italy.
•388-
Notes to Pages 145-148
24. Published by Gershom Scholem in Kitvei Yad be-Kabbalah (National Library, Jerusalem,
I 93°)> P- 22 §-
25. Numbers 33:38; Deuteronomy 34:5.
26. Ms. Jerusalem 8° 1303, fol. 53b; Ms. Vatican 295, fol. 6b.
27. Sefer ha-Malmad, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1649, fol. 204a.
28. Seeldel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 102-103, IJ 5-
29. Sefer Ner 'Elohim, Ms. Munich 10, fol. 167b.
30. Anonymous Commentary on the Pentateuch, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1920, fol. 26a.
31. The inner war that takes place in human thought corresponds to the appellation
Mahashauah, which is related to the first sefirah in theosophical Kabbalah. See also
Abulafia's Ve-Zot li-Yhudah, p. 21; and Wolfson, Abraham Abulajia, pp. 138-139.
32. Moladetah. On the symbolism of the tree, branches, and fruit in Abulafia's Kabbalah
see Gan Na'ul, Ms. London, British Library, OR. 13136, fols. 3a-b, which has been
copied in Sefer ha-Peliy'ah, pt. 1, fol. 73a.
33. A hint at the second sefirah, Hokhmah, which is also conceived as relating to human
spiritual activity. For the psychologization of the theosophical system in Abulafia see
Idel, Hasidism, pp. 227-232.
34. BT, Sanhedrin, fol. 106b; and Rashi ad loc.
35. Sefer Ner 'Elohim, Ms. Munich 10, fol. 130b. On the spiritual war as a major theme in
Abulafia's mysticism see M. Idel, "Milhemet ha-Yetzarim: Psychomachia in Abraham
Abulafia's Ecstatic Kabbalah," in Peace and War in Jeunsh Culture, ed. Avriel Bar Levav
(Merkaz Shazar, Jerusalem, 2006), pp. 99-143 (Hebrew); and above, chap. 6, note 6.
36. R. Isaac ibn Latif, Sefer Tzurat ha-'Olam, ed. Z. Stern (Vienna, i860), p. 5. Compare the
texts of R. Eleazar of Worms, cited in Dan, The Esoteric Theology, p. 97; and in Idel,
"Sefirot above Sefirot," pp. 261 n. no, 278-279.
37. Ibn Latif, Sejer Tzurat ha-'Olam, pp. 25 and 29. See also ibid., p. 18.
38. Sefer Sitrei Torah, Ms. Vatican 441, fol. 112a. On this treatise see Idel, "Sefirot above
Sefirot," pp. 260-262.
39. Sefer Ner 'Elohim, Ms. Munich 10, fols. I55b-is6a.
40. Sefer Sitrei Torah, Ms. Vatican 441, fol. 156a.
41. See M. Idel, "The Image of Man above the Sefirot: R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid's
Doctrine of the Supernal Sefirot [Tzahtzahot] and Its Evolution," Da'at 4 (1980),
pp. 41-54 (Hebrew).
42. Literally, "world, year, and soul," an expression found in Sefer Yetzirah. See Sefer Ner
'Elohim, Ms. Munich 10, fol. 156a. On the "sefirot of the soul," see ibid., fol. 130a.
43. Heller Wilensky, "Isaac ibn Latif — Philosopher or Kabbalist?," pp. 202-203.
44. See Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Re'ayon, Ms. Oxford 1658, fol. 61a; idem, Sefer
ha-Hesheq, Ms. New York, JTS 1801, fol. 10a.
45. R. Joseph Gikatilla, Perush le-Sefer Moreh Nevokhim (Venice, 1574), fol. 30c; idem, Ginnat
Tgoz (Hanau, 1614), fols. 52d, 54b, 66c-d, 67c. Some hints at the immanence of the
sefirot in the world occur in Ginnat Tgoz, fols. 52d, 53b.
•389-
Notes to Pages 148-151
46. Sefer Ner 'Elohim, Ms. Munich 10, fol. 156a.
47. For an immanentist stand of R. Yitzhaq of Acre, another follower of ecstatic Kabbalah,
although he belongs also to the theosophical-theurgical form, see Idel, Kabbalah and
Eros, p. 171.
48. Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 357-369.
49. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, p. 194 n. 31.
50. See Gotdieb, Studies, pp. 357-369.
51. On this early-fourteenth-century theosophical treatise see the publication of the
Hebrew text and its Latin translation in The Great Parchment: Flauius Mithridates' Latin
Translation, the Hebren> Text, and an English Version, ed. Giulio Busi with Simonetta M.
Bondoni and Saverio Campanini (Nino Aragno Editore, Turin, 2004). Busi assumes
that the Kabbalist who wrote the Great Parchment did so in the early fourteenth century
and was influenced by or perhaps a student of Menahem Recanati.
52. Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 368-369.
53. Ibid., pp. 361-362.
54. On the view of the sefirot in this book see ibid., pp. 293-302, 315-324; Avraham
Elkayam, "On the Architectonic Structure of Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut," Qiryat Sefer 64
(1992-93), pp. 289-3 °4 (Hebrew); idem, "Between ReferentialismandPerformativism:
Two Approaches to the Understanding of the Symbol in Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut,"
Da'at 24 (1990), pp. 29-37 (Hebrew).
55. See Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 359-360. For more on this figure see Idel, R. Menahem
Recanati, 2: app. 6.
56. This angel is connected, according to some Muslim philosophical sources, to the
Agent Intellect, and this is also the case, though rarely, in Abulafia's writings. See Idel,
The Mystical Experience, p. 89; idem, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, p. 78; and Wolfson,
Abraham Abulafia, p. 144.
57. BT, Sotah, fol. 36a.
58. Abraham Abulafia, Commentary on Sejer Yetzirah, Ms. Paris, BN 768, fol. 2a. For an edi-
tion of this book, but one which attempts to claim that the author wanted to attribute
it to R. Abraham ibn Ezra — quite a strange assumption in my opinion — see Israel
Weinstock, An Anonymous Commentary by Rabbi Abraham Abulafia (Mossad ha-Rav Kook,
Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 2-3 (Hebrew).
59. R. Reuven Tzarfati, Commentary on Sejer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut, Ms. Cambridge, Trinity
College 108, fol. 123b.
60. See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 143-144 n. 55.
61. See app. 2.
62. See also chap. 12, sec. 2.
63. Sefer Toledot 'Adam, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 836, fol. 180b. For more on Saturn in
Alemanno's thought see chap. 14 of this volume.
64. On the importance of the age of forty for advanced study in philosophy and more espe-
cially in Kabbalah see M. Idel, "On the History of the Interdiction against the Study of
Kabbalah before the Age of Forty," AJS Reuieui 5 (1980) (Hebrew Section), pp. 1-20.
•390-
Notes to Pages 151-155
65. Sefer Toledot 'Adam, fol. 162b.
66. Abraham Abulafia, Introduction to Prophetic Books, Ms. Rome, Angelica 38, fol. 2a. For
Raziel as a name of Abulafia see also Idel, Tile Mystical Experience, p. 140.
67. Isaac ibn Latif, introduction to Sha'ar 3 of Sha'ar ha-Shamayyim, a text found still in
manuscripts, especially Ms. Vatican 335.
68. Idem, Tzurat ha-'Olam (Maqor, Jerusalem, 1970), chap. 5.
69. Sefer Toledot 'Adam, fol. 143a. The source in Ibn Latif is his introduction to Ginzei
ha-Melekh, ed. Aharon Jellinek (Vienna, 1862), which reads: "And by reason of my
choosing eternal, true life, my soul has longed and yearned ... to leave its temporary
dwelling, which is Kiryat Arba, and to ascend to the city of heroes, the city of the great
king, which is its permanent abode."
70. See Heller Wilensky, "Isaac ibn Latif- — Philosopher or Kabbalist?," p. 186 n. 11.
71. See especially Ibn Latif, Sha'ar ha-Shamayyim, Ms. Vatican 335.
72. See, e.g., Sefer Toledot Adam, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 836, fols. 147a, 156a, 159a, 159b.
For additional views related to combinations of letters in mostly Italian kabbalistic
sources see Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 136-137.
73. Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 836, fol. 184a. On this phenomenon see M. Idel, "Abulafia's
Secrets of the Guide: A Linguistic Turn," in Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism,
ed. Alfred Ivri, E. R. Wolfson, and A. Arkush (Harwood Academic Publishers,
Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 300-304; and idem, "Maimonides' Guide o/the Perplexed,"
pp. 212-216.
74. See Heller Wilensky, "Isaac ibn Latif — Philosopher or Kabbalist?," p. 186.
75. See M. Idel, "The Throne and the Seven-Branched Candlestick: Pico della Mirandola's
Hebrew Source," JWCI 40 (1977), pp. 290-292.
76. See Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 86; idem, The Occult Philosophy, p. 190. See also chap. 14,
sec. 3. For more on this issue see M. Idel, "Kabbalah and Hermeticism in Dame
Frances A. Yates's Renaissance," in Esote'risme, gnoses et imaginaire symbolique: Melanges
ojferts a Antoine Faiure, ed. R. Caron, J. Godwin, W. J. Hanegraaff, and J.-L. Vieillard-
Baron (Peeters, Louvain, 2001), pp. 71-90.
Chapter 12: The Kabbalistic-Philosophical-Magical
Exchanges in Italy
1. This is only a part of a much longer passage; see the translation in Ivan Marcus, Piety
and Society (Brill, Leiden, 1981), p. 67. See also the version printed in Scholem, Reshit
ha-Qabbalah, p. 203.
2. See Moshe Idel, "The Evil Thought of the Deity," Tarbitz 49 (1980), pp. 356-364
(Hebrew); and Robert Bonfil, "Between Eretz Israel and Babylonia," in Shalem, ed.
J. Hacker, vol. 5 (Makhon Ben Tzvi, Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 1-30 (Hebrew).
3. See Dan, The Esoteric Theology, pp. 14-16; Avraham Grossman, The Early Sages ojAshkenaz:
Their Liues, Leadership, andWorks(goo-iog6) (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, ig8i),pp. 29-35
(Hebrew); Bonfil, "Between Eretz Israel and Babylonia"; and Moshe Gil, "Between
Two Worlds: The Connections between Babylonia and the Communities in Christian
•391-
Notes to Pages 156-158
Europe in the Gaonite Period," in Shlomo Simonsohn Jubilee Volume, ed. Daniel Carpi and
Aharon Oppenheimer (Tel Aviv University Press, Tel Aviv, 1993), p. 51 n. 4 (Hebrew).
4. For the importance of the median place of Italy between Jewish cultural centers I
follow the seminal observations of Robert Bonfil.
5. See chap. 14 near note 13.
6. See Giuseppe Sermoneta, "Jehuda ben Moshe Daniel Romano, traducteur de Saint
Thomas," in Hommage a Georges Vajda, ed. G. Nahon and C. Touati (Peeters, Louvain,
1980), p. 246.
7. Shlomo Pines, "Medieval Doctrines in Renaissance Garb? Some Jewish and Arabic
Sources of Leone Ebreo's Doctrines," in Jeiuiih Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed.
B. D. Cooperman (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1983), p. 390.
8. Georges Vajda, "Un chapitre de 1'histoire du conflit entre la Kabbale et la philosophie:
La polemique anti-intellectualiste de Joseph b. Shalom Ashkenazi," Archiues d'histoire
doctrinale et litte'raire du Moyen A^e 31 (1956), pp. 131-132; idem, Recherches sur la philosophie
et la Kabbale dans la pense'e juiue du Moyen Age (Mouton, Paris, 1962); idem, "Comment le
philosophe juif Moise de Narbonne comprenait-il les paroles ecstatiques des
soufies?," in Actas del primer congreso de estudios arabes e islamicos (Comite Permanente del
Congreso de Estudios Arabes e Islamicos, Madrid, 1964), pp. 129-135; idem,
"Recherches sur la synthese philosophico-Kabbalistique de Samuel ibn Motot,"
Archiues d'histoire doctrinale et litte'raire du Moyen Ages 27 (i960), pp. 29-63; Alexander
Altmann, "Moses Narboni's Epistle on Shi'ur Qomah," in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, ed. Altmann (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 242-244.
9. See Alemanno's Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fols. 97a, 102a; and his
untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fols. gib-g2a, 94b.
10. R. Jacob Anatoli, Sefer Malmad ha-Talmidim (Lyck, 1866), introduction (unpaginated).
See also Klaus Herrmann, "Die Gottesnamen KWZW und MTzPTz in der Heikhalot-
Literatur," Frankfurter Judaistische Beitrage 16 (1988), pp. 75-80.
11. See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 50-52.
12. Printed in the journal 'Otzar Nehmad, ed. Raphael Kircheim, vol. 2 (1857; reprint,
Jerusalem, 1967), p. 133. See Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," p. 40 n. 28; and Ravitzky,
History and Faith, p. 265, offering a different translation of this text.
13. See, e.g., the contemporaneous discussion by R. Abraham ofEsquirain his Sefer Yesod
'Olam, Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 607, fol. 179a; and more in chap. 21 of this volume.
14. Abulafia, Sheua' Netiuot ha-Torah, p. 22.
15. See Ravitzky, History and Faith, p. 265.
16. See Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," pp. 129-133.
17. Printed in Hemdah Genuzah, ed. Z. Edelmann (Konigsberg, 1856), pp. 42-45. On this
spurious epistle see Moshe Idel, "Astral Dreams in Judaism: Twelfth to Fourteenth
Centuries," in Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreamincj,
ed. David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa (Oxford University Press, New York, 1999),
pp. 239-245. 1 assume that the text was forged in Catalonia in the 1270s or 1280s.
•392-
Notes to Pages 158-160
18. Unfortunately, we have no evidence about the literary activity of any of Abulafia's four
students in Capua,
ig. Edelmann, Hemdah Genuzah, p. 45
20. Ravitzky, History and Faith, pp. 262-263.
21. On this term see the seminal study by Pines, "On the Term Ruhaniyyut"; Idel, Hasidism;
and app. 3 of this volume.
22. See Moshe Idel, "Abulafia's Secrets of the Guide: A Linguistic Turn," in Perspectiues on
Jewish Thought and Mysticism, ed. Alfred Ivri, E. R. Wolfson, and A. Arkush (Harwood
Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 269-272.
23. See Abulafia, Sheua' Netivot ha-Torah, pp. 14-15, 20.
24. This interpretation is the subject of a future study, in which I shall analyze some new
manuscript material of Abulafia's and passages from Gikatilla's early writings. See
also later material adduced in Altmann, "Moses Narboni's Epistle on Shi'ur Qomah,"
pp. 242-244.
25. See Mordecai Margalioth, ed., Sepher Ha-Razim (Yediy'ot Aharonot, Jerusalem, 1966),
pp. 29-46.
26. See Abulafia, Sheua' Netivot ha-Torah, p. 21, where he mentions Sefer Raziel in a list of
older magical-mystical texts and mentions divine names that he learned from it; and
again, p. 2, where he quotes a gematria from this book as part of a tradition. I did not
find this gematria in the various extant versions of Sheva' Netiuot ha-Torah. A book with
the name Sejer Raziel was quoted by R. Abraham ibn Ezra in the twelfth century and by
R. Jacob ben Jacob ha-Kohen in Castile in the thirteenth. See Idel, Language, Torah, and
Hermeneutics, p. 152; and, apparently also in this milieu, a kabbalistic text attributed to
R. Meshullam Tzarfati, namely Meshullam the Frenchman: Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana
123, fols. 7ob-7ia. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, p. 105; Mark Verman, The Book of
Contemplation (SUNY Press, Albany, 1992), p. 205.
27. See chap. 16, sec. 2.
28. Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 218-219.
29. On del Medigo as an Averroistic thinker see Arieh L. Motzkin, "Eliah del Medigo,
Averroes, and Averroism," Italia 6 (1987), pp. 7-19; Alfred Ivry, "Remnants of Jewish
Averroism in the Renaissance," in Cooperman, Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century,
pp. 250-261; Jacob Ross, preface to R. Elijah del Medigo, Sefer Behinat ha-Dat, ed. Ross
(Tel Aviv University Press, Tel Aviv, 1984), pp. 44-54 (Hebrew); Naomi Vogelmann
Goldfeld, "Elia del Medigo e l'Averroismo Ebraico," in La cultura ebraica all'epoca di
Lorenzo il Magnifico, ed. Dora Liscia Bemporad and Ida Zatelli (Leo S. Olschki, Florence,
1998), pp. 41-47; and Harvey J. Hames, "Elijah del Medigo: An Archetype of Halakhic
Man?," in Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, ed. David B.
Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2004),
pp. 39-53. Del Medigo's attitude to Kabbalah can be compared to that ofMaimonides'
approach to the concept of Sitrei Torah: the Great Eagle was at least ready to apply
the Aristotelian topics to Ma'aseh Bereshit and Ma'aseh Merkauah despite the aura of
•393-
Notes to Pages 160-163
esotericism that rabbinic thought bestowed upon the secrets of the Torah. See Idel,
"Maimonides and Kabbalah," pp. 31-35. I wonder whether del Medigo respected
Kabbalah's esotericism even more than Maimonides did and refrained from offering
his vision of its pure meaning. See also Kalman P. Bland, "Elijah del Medigo's
Averroistic Response to the Kabbalahs of the Fifteenth-Century Jewry and Pico della
Mirandola," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 1 (1991), pp. 34 and 35 n. 27.
30. Bland, "Elijah del Medigo's Averroistic Response," pp. 32-53.
31. Del Medigo, Sefer Behinat ha-Dat, p. 92; Bland, "Elijah del Medigo's Averroistic
Response," p. 46.
32. Del Medigo, Sefer Behinat ha-Dat, p. 91.
33. See Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, "Sefirot as the Essence of God in the Writings of David
Messer Leon," AJS Reuieu; 7-8 (1982-83), pp. 409-425; and idem, Between Worlds,
pp. 186-187, 213-218. At the beginning of the sixteenth century R Abraham ben Me'ir
de Balmes also offered an Aristotelian interpretation of the ten sefirot in his 'Iggeret
ha-Asiriyah, a topic that requires detailed analysis. See the edition of R Cohen
(privately printed, Jerusalem, 1998).
34. On this controversy see Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 385-396; and Ravitzky, History and Faith,
pp. 115-153.
35. Del Medigo, Sefer Behinat ha-Dat, p. 99.
36. Ibid., p. 92.
37. See also ibid., p. gi.
38. Chap. 4. Compare Alemanno's use of the same treatise in a similar context; below,
chap. 15, note 37.
39. Namely cosmic cycles. On this concept in Jewish mysticism see Haviva Pedaya,
Nahmanides: Cyclical Time and Holy Text (Am 'Oved, Tel Aviv, 2003) (Hebrew); Scholem,
Origins ojthe Kabbalah, pp. 460-474; and M. Idel, "The Jubilee in Jewish Mysticism," in
Millenarismi nella cultura contemporanea, ed. Enrico Rambaldi (FrancoAngeli, Milan,
2001), pp. 209-232.
40. R. Elijah del Medigo, Commentary on De Substantia Orbis, Ms. Paris, BN 968, fols. 4ia-b.
41. On these Kabbalists see chaps. 13 and 18.
42. See Bohdan Kieszkowski, "Les rapports entre Elie del Medigo et Pic de la Mirandole,"
Rinascimento 4 (1964), pp. 58-61; Bland, "Elijah del Medigo's Averroistic Response,"
pp. 23-53; and Ross, preface to del Medigo, Sefer Behinat ha-Dat, pp. 30-33.
43. See the historical and philological critiques formulated in Renaissance Italy and later,
and addressed to the mystical and magical texts conceived of as ancient, Pseudo-
Dionysius and the Hermetic literature, during the Renaissance. Cf. Yates, Giordano
Bruno, pp. 398-433.
44. Idel, "Differing Conceptions," pp. 155-174.
45. For a more detailed account of the Jewish Kabbalists' reactions to the emergence of
Christian Kabbalah see Moshe Idel, "Jewish Thinkers versus Christian Kabbalah," in
Christliche Kabbala, ed. W. Schmidt-Biggemann (Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern,
2003), pp. 49-65.
•394-
Notes to Page 165
C HAPTER 13 : Prisca Theologia
1. See, e.g., Daniel R Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism Jrom the
Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Duckworth, London, 1972); Charles Schmidt, "Prisca
theologia e philosophia perenis: Due temi del rinascimento italiano e loro fortuna," in
I! pensiero Italiano del Rinascimento e il tempo nostra, ed. G. Tarugi (Leo S. Olschki,
Florence, 1970), pp. 21-236; Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, p. 198 n. 41; Moshe Idel,
"Kabbalah and Ancient Philosophy in R. Isaac and Jehudah Abravanel," in The
Philosophy of Leone Ebreo, ed. M. Dorman-Z. Levy (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv,
1985), pp. 73-112 (Hebrew); and Fabrizio Lelli, "lews, Humanists, and the Reappraisal
of Pagan Wisdom Associated with the Ideal of the Dignitas Hominis," in Hebraica
Veritas?: Christian Hebraists and the Study ojjudaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allison P.
Coudert and leffrey Shoulson (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2004),
pp. 49-70; as well as note 4 below.
2. Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, in Opera Omnia, vol. 1 (Basel, 1576), p. 386. On this
text see now Brian Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth: Reincarnation in Early Modern Italian
Kabbalah (Brill, Leiden, 2009), p. 245.
3. IrestrictmybibliographytoafewstudiesinEnglish: Seymour Feldman, "i4g2:AHouse
Divided," in Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, ed. Benjamin R Gampel (Columbia
University Press, New York, 1997), pp. 38-58; idem, Philosophy in a Time of Crisis: Don Isaac
Abrauanel, Defender ojthe Faith (Roudedge, London, 2002); Ben Zion Netanyahu, Don Isaac
Abrauanel, Statesman and Philosopher (Jewish Publications Society, Philadelphia, 1972);
A. J. Reines, Maimonides and Abrauanel on Prophecy (Hebrew Union College Press,
Cincinnati, 1970); Menahem Kellner, Dogma in Medieval Jeiuish Thought: From Maimonides
to Abrauanel (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford, 1986), pp. 179-195; idem,
Isaac Abrauanel: Principles oJFaith (Littman Library, London, 1982). However, many aspects
of Abravanel's philosophical thought still await detailed analysis. For the messianic
views of Abravanel see Eric Lawee, " 'Israel Has No Messiah' in Late Medieval Spain,"
Journal ojjeiuish and Philosophy 5 (1996), pp. 245-279; and his more recent important
monograph, Isaac Abarbanel's Stance touwd Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue (SUNY
Press, Albany, 2001); as well as Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth, pp. 102-138.
4. For more on this topic see Idel, "Kabbalah and Ancient Philosophy" ; idem, "Kabbalah,
Platonism and Prisca Theologia: The Case of Menashe ben Israel," in Menasseh ben
Israel and His World, ed. Y. Kaplan, H. Meshoulan, and R. Popkin (Brill, Leiden, 1989),
pp. 207-219 ; idem, "Prisca Theologia in Marsilio Ficino and in Some Jewish Treatments,"
in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. M. J. B. Allen and Valery
Rees (Brill, Leiden, 2001), pp. 137-158; Fabrizio Lelli, "Prisca Philosophia and Docta
Religio: The Boundaries of Rational Knowledge in Jewish and Christian Humanist
Thought," Jeurish Quarterly Reuieui 91 (2000), pp. 53-100; Lelli's remarks in his edition
of Genazzano's La lettera preziosa; and Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth, pp. 244-245.
5. See, e.g., the deep influence of an Arabic treatise on the thought of Abravanel and his
son, as discussed in chap. 16, sec. 2.
•395-
Notes to Pages 166-170
6. Isaac Abravanel, Sefer 'Ateret Zeqenim (Warsaw, 1894), fols. 4ib~42a.
7. See M. Idel, "The Magical and Theurgical Interpretation of Music in Jewish Texts:
Renaissance to Hasidism," Yuual 4 (1982), pp. 42-45 (Hebrew).
8. Namely Enoch, a figure related to Hermes. See Idel, "Hermeticism and Judaism,"
pp. 59-60.
9. Isaac Abravanel, Mif'alot 'Elohim (Lemberg, 1863), fols. 5ga-b. See also Ogren,
Renaissance and Rebirth, pp. 106-107.
10. ha-philosophim ha-rishcmim. This phrase seems to point to the pre-Socratic
philosophers.
11. Isaac Abravanel, Yeshu'ot Meshiho (Konigsberg, 1881), fol. gb. See Ogren, Renaissance
and Rebirth, pp. 106-107.
12. As expressed in BT, Niddah, fol. 13b.
13. Indeed, the existence of such a view in the Hermetic corpus is not easy to explain, and
scholars have already pointed out that there may be a Jewish influence here. However,
what is indeed important is the occurrence of a view of transmigration as a
punishment for refraining from efforts to procreate or for failing to procreate, which
is reminiscent of kabbalistic texts. I hope to elaborate on this issue elsewhere. See, for
the time being, A. J. Festugiere, Herme'tisme et mystique paienne (Aubier-Montaigne,
Paris, 1967), pp. 113-120.
14. tziyyur. This verb occurs in many contexts. The Geronese Kabbalists used it in similar
contexts, but whereas the earlier Kabbalists were concerned with the content of the
second sefirah conceived as the divine thought, the philosopher envisions the whole
sefirotic realm as the content of the divine mind. See also above, chap. 4, note 48.
15. The Answers oJR. Isaac Abrauanel to R. Shaul ha-Kohen (Venice, 1574), fol. i2d. On the
comparison of the third sefirah, Binah, to Platonic ideas see Abravanel's Mif'alot
'Elohim, fol. 58d. Compare also the later stand of a thinker deeply interested in
kabbalistic issues, R. David Messer Leon, who also posits the sefirot as ideas in the
divine mind; cf. Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, "Sefirot as the Essence of God in the
Writings of David Messer Leon," AJS Reuieu; 7-8 (1982-83), pp. 413-425.
16. See Idel, "Kabbalah and Ancient Philosophy," pp. 77-79.
17. Abravanel, Mif'alot 'Elohim, fol. 58d.
18. Ibid., fols. 59d-6oa.
19. Isaac Abravanel, Neui'im Rishonim (Jerusalem, 1949), p. 305. On the theft of philosophy
see Norman Roth, " 'Theft of Philosophy' by the Greeks from the Jews," Classical Folia
32 (1978), pp. 53-67.
20. Shlomo Pines, "Medieval Doctrines in Renaissance Garb?: Some Jewish and Arabic
Sources of Leone Ebreo's Doctrines," in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed.
B. D. Cooperman (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 365-398.
21. Leone Ebreo, Dialotjhi d'Amore, ed. Carl Gebhardt (Winter, Heidelberg, 1929), pt. 3,
p. 125b.
22. Already a generation before Ficino, Leonardo Bruni, the famous translator of the
Platonic dialogues, contended in his preface to the Phaedo that Plato studied with
•396-
Notes to Pages 171-173
Jeremiah in Egypt. See Raymond Marcel, Marsile Finn (1433-1499) (Belles Lettres,
Paris, 1958), p. 621 n. 2.
23. Isaac Abravanel, Commentary on the Pentateuch at Deuteronomy 25:5 (Warsaw, 1862),
fol. 40a.
24. On the view that Pythagoras studied with the prophets see, among many other sources,
Muhammad ibn Abu Karim Al-Shaharastani, Relujionnsparteien und Philosophen-Schule,
ed. Theodor Haarbruecker, vol. 2 (A. Schwetschke, Halle, 1851), p. 90.
25. Abravanel, Commentary on the Pentateuch, fol. 49b; Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth,
pp. 105-106.
26. Abravanel, Mif'alot 'Elohim, fols. 3a-b; compare ibid., fols. 3c-d, 43a.
27. Sejer Berit Menuhah (Jerusalem, 1959), fol. 2a. One of the first authors to mention Berit
Menuhah was a contemporary of the unknown writer, Yohanan Alemanno, who at the
time was living in the same area where Abravanel wrote his book. On the Adamite
origin of the Kabbalah see also R. Meir ibn Gabbai, Sefer Auodat ha-Qodesh, pt. Ill
(Jerusalem, 1973), chap. 21, fol. 83b; and Menahem Kasher, Torah Shelemah, vol. 19
(i960), pp. 360-362 (Hebrew).
28. R. Shem Tov ben Shem Tov, Sefer ha-'Emunot (Ferrara, 1556), fols. 2ob-2ia.
29. Abravanel, Mif'alot 'Elohim, fol. 2b.
30. R. Shem Tov Falaquera, Sefer ha-Ma'alot, ed. Ludwik Venetianer (Berlin, 1894), p. 12.
31. See, e.g., Ficino's commentary on Plato's Meno: "Zoroaster Bactrianis Persique leges
tradens, in Horomasim. Trismegistus Aegyptys, in Mercurium. Moyses Iudaeis rectis-
sime in pattern totius naturae deorum. Minos Cretensibus, in Ionem. . . . Plato noster
Magnesys et Siculus, in Iovem et Apollinem"; Marsilio Ficino, Omnia Diuini Platonis Opera
(Basel, 1539), p. 49. See also Ficino's letter to some lawyers, Letters, vol. 1 (Spring
Publications, Dallas, 1975), p. 13: "all lawgivers have pardy like apes copied Moses, the
truest author of divine laws. Pardy compelled by truth, I know not how, they affirmed that
they received the laws from God in various guises: Osiris, the giver of the laws to the
Egyptians, fromMercurius; Zoroaster of the Arimaspians, fromagood spirit; Zamolxis of
the Scythians, from Vesta; Minos of Crete and Solon of Athens, from Jove . . . Mohammed,
King of the Arabs, from the angel Gabriel. Our own Plato took the framework of his
books on law from God, whom he declared to be the universal author of all laws."
32. See Ficino, Letters, p. 170: "Therefore, Braccesi, you owe your poetry not so much to
your diligence, which is considerable, as to the inspiration of the Muses. And from
now on ... I beg you to forget mortal men and, since your song is God-inspired, to
sing to God. For not only Moses and David but the other Hebrew prophets clearly
warned us to do this by their religious songs, as also did Zoroaster, Linus, Orpheus,
Museus, Moses, Empedocles, Parmenides, Heraclitus and Xenophanes."
33. See Richard H. Popkin, "The Pre-Adamite Theory in the Renaissance," in Philosophy
and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor oJP. 0. Kristeller, ed. E. P. Mahoney (Brill,
Leiden, 1976), pp. 50-69.
34. Marsilio Ficino, The Philebus Commentary, ed. and trans. Michael J. B. Allen (1975; reprint,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 2001), pp. 142-144. See also ibid., pp. 270-272.
•397-
Notes to Pages 173-174
35. On this Kabbalist see Lelli, La lettera preziosa; Roland Goetschel, "Elie Hayyim de
Genazzano et la Kabbale," RE] 142 (1983), pp. 91-108; Alexander Altmann, "Beyond
the Realm of Philosophy: R. Elijah ben Benjamin of Gennazano," in Shlomo Pines Jubilee
Volume on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, ed. Moshe Idel, Zeev W. Harvey, and E.
Schweid, vol. 1 (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 61-101 (Hebrew); Meir Benayahu,
"The Polemic between Kabbalah and Halakhah," Da'at 5 (1980), pp. 78-79 (Hebrew);
Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth, pp. 163-183; and now Eric Lawee, "Abravanel in Italy:
The Critique of the Kabbalist Elijah Hayyim Genazzano," Jewish History 23 (2009),
pp. 223-253.
36. On Orlandus see Idel, "Differing Conceptions," pp. 158-161; Lelli, La lettera preziosa,
pp. 75-76; and Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth, pp. 177-178.
37. On Numenius's belief in metempsychosis into animal bodies see Lelli, La lettera
preziosa, pp. 44, 74, 77; and above, Introduction, note 75.
38. I.e., R. Joseph Albo's Sefer ha-'Iqqarim, pt. IV, chap. 29.
39. The concept of transmigration of the soul into animal bodies apparently occurs only
in the works of the Kabbalists who wrote after the late thirteenth century. They are
mentioned and quoted by R. Menahem Recanati as "the later Kabbalists." See
Alexander Altmann, "Sefer Ta'amei ha-Miziuot Attributed to R. Isaac ibn Farhi and
Its Author," Qiryat Sefer 40 (1965), pp. 256-257 (Hebrew); Gottlieb, Studies, p. 380.
40. Lelli, La lettera preziosa, p. 153. On this passage see more details at ibid., nn. 108-109; Idel,
"Differing Conceptions," pp. 158-161; and now Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth, p. 176.
41. Compare Pico's opposite view that Abraham brought the Chaldaean doctrines from
their region of origin. For a possible source of this view see Joseph Bidez and Franz
Cumont, Les matjes helle'nise's: Zoroastre, Ostanh et Hystaspe d'apres la tradition (jrecque
(Societe d'editions "Les Belles lettres," Paris, 1938), 2: 21. On Zoroaster as Abraham's
student see ibid., 1: 41 and 2: 48. On the Hebrew sources for such a stand see Michah
J. bin Gorion, Die Sagen der Juden (Schocken, Berlin, 1935), p. 219.
42. Lelli, La lettera preziosa, p. 152. On this passage see ibid., pp. 74-75; Idel, "Differing
Conceptions," pp. 158-159; Altmann, "Beyond the Realm of Philosophy," pp. 80-81;
and Goetschel, "Elie Hayyim de Genazzano," p. 98, especially n. 28.
43. Lelli, La lettera preziosa, p. 152.
44. Or astronomy, in Hebrew Tztacjeninut. On Abraham as the inventor of astronomy in a
context in which Zoroaster is also mentioned as living immediately after the patriarch
see Bidez and Cumont, Les mages helle'nises, 2: 48.
45. Sefer ha-'Auodah ha-Nabbatit. On this voluminous book of magic, written in the Middle
Ages and extant in an Arabic translation, see Toufic Fahd, ed., L'atjriculture Nabate'ene,
traduction en Arabe attribue' a Abu Bakr Ahmad b. Ali al-Kasdani, connu sous le nom d'Ibn
Wahshiyya, 2 vols. (Damascus, 1995). It is implausible that Genazzano had seen this
book, since it had not been translated into Hebrew. There are only scanty quotations
from this book in the writings of Jewish authors in the Middle Ages. See chap. 20 of
this volume, where a quotation from this book is discussed.
•398-
Notes to Pages 174-177
46. Lelli, La lertera preziosa, p. 237.
47. See Idel, "Differing Conceptions," p. 158 n. 100.
48. Ficino, De religione Christiana, in Opera (Basel, 1561), 1: 29.
49. Ibid.
50. There was also a Persian-Arab tradition to the effect that Zoroaster was a pupil of
Jeremiah; see James Darmesteter, "Textes Pehlvis relatifs au Judaisme," REJ 19 (1889),
p. 56. This may be an elaboration on the earlier view that Plato studied with this prophet.
51. See Marcel, Marsile Ficin, pp. 325-371.
52. The two sets of pillars are related to a tradition that there were two types of flood, one
of water and one of fire, and that the sciences were engraved on two different materi-
als in order to ensure that they survived either kind of flood. On this theme see Idel,
"Hermeticism and Judaism," p. 71 n. 13; and John Scarborough, "Hermetic and
Related Texts in Classical Antiquity," in Hermeticism and the Renaissance, ed. I. Merkel
and Allen G. Debus (Folger Books, Washington, D.C., 1988), p. 23.
53. See R. Abraham Yagel, Beit Ya'ar ha-Levanon, translated and discussed by Ruderman,
Kabbalah, Magic, and Science, p. 143; and Yehiya's Shalshelet ha-Qabbalah (Hotsa'at
ha-dorot ha-rishonim ye-korotom, Jerusalem, 1962), p. 218.
54. See Ficino's De religione Christiana, quoted and discussed by Trinkaus, In Our Likeness and
Image, 2: 741-742. On Zoroaster as Ham see Bidez and Cumont, Les mages helle'nise's, 2:
49-50,54-55.
55. See Yagel, Beit Ya'ar ha-Leuancm, translated and discussed by David B. Ruderman, "On
Divine Justice, Metempsychosis, and Purgatory: Ruminations of a Sixteenth-Century
Italian Jew," Jewish History 1 (1986), p. 16.
56. See Idel, "Differing Conceptions," pp. 140-141; Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and
Science, pp. 159-160.
Chapter 14: R. Yohanan ben Yitzhaq Alemanno
1. See Umberto Cassuto, The Jews in Florence in the Renaissance Period, trans. Menahem
Hartum (Makhon ben Zvi, Jerusalem, 1967) (Hebrew); Avraham Melamed, "The
Hebrew Encyclopedias of the Renaissance," in The Medieual Hebrew Encyclopedias of
Science and Philosophy, ed. Steven Harvey (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2000), pp. 441-464;
idem, "The Hebrew 'laudatio' of Yohanan Alemanno — in Praise of Lorenzo il
Magnifico and the Florentine Constitution," in Studies on the History of Jews in Italy —
100th Anniversary ojthe Birth oJM. D. U. Cassuto, ed. Chaim Beinart (Magnes Press,
Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 1-34; idem, "Yohanan Alemanno and the Development of
Human Society," in World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. 8 (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 85-93
(Hebrew); idem, The Philosopher-King in Medieual and Renaissance Jewish Political Thought,
ed. Lenn E. Goodman (SUNY Press, Albany, 2003); Hiram Pflaum, Die Idee der Liebe
(J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 1926), pp. 67-70; Idel, "The Study Program"; idem,
"Hermeticism and Judaism" ; idem, "The Throne and the Seven-Branched Candlestick:
Pico della Mirandola's Hebrew Source," JWCI 40 (1977), pp. 290-292. See also the
•399-
Notes to Page 178
important studies of Fabrizio Lelli: "Retorica, poetica e linguistica nel Hay ha-'Olamim
di Yohanan Alemanno" (Ph.D. diss., University of Turin, 1990-91); "Pico tra filosofia
ebraica e 'Qabbala,'" in Pico, Poliziano e 1'umanesimo dijine Quattrocento, ed. Paolo Viti
(Leo S. Olschki, Florence, 1994), pp. 193-223; "Biography and Autobiography in
Yohanan Alemanno's Literary Perception," in Cultural Intermediaries: Jeurish Intellectuals
in Early Modern Italy, ed. David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 25-38; "Jews, Humanists, and the
Reappraisal of Pagan Wisdom Associated with the Ideal of the Dignitas Hotninis," in
Hebraica Veritas?: Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed.
Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey Shoulson (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia,
2004), pp. 49-70; "L'educazione ebraica nella seconda meta del '400, Poetica e scienze
naturale nel '400: Poetica e scienze naturalinelHay Ha-'Olamim di Yohanan Alemanno,"
Rinascimento, 2nd ser. 36 (1996), pp. 75-136; and "Umanesimo Laurenziano nell'opera
di Yohanan Alemanno," in La cultura ebraica all'epoca di Lorenzo il Magnifico, ed. Dora
Liscia Bemporad and Ida Zatelli (Leo S. Olschki, Florence, 1998), pp. 49-67;
Giuseppe Sermoneta, "L'incontro culturale tra ebrei e christiani nel Medioevo e nel
Rinascimento," in Atti del VI Congresso internazionale deH'AISG, ed. Michele Luzzati,
Michele Olivari, and Alessandra Veronese (Carruci, Rome, 1988), pp. 183-207; Hava
Tirosh-Samuelson, Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being
(Hebrew Union College Press, Cincinnati, 2003), pp. 412-423. On Alemanno and Pico
see also B. C. Novak, "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Jochanan Alemanno," JWCI
45 (1982), pp. 125-147. For more studies on these figures see notes 3-7, 60, 61, 63, and
64 below.
I shall analyze in another study the documents corroborating this summary.
See Daniel Carpi, Between Renaissance and Ghetto (University Publishing Project, Tel Aviv,
1989), pp. 70-72 (Hebrew).
For documents related to Alemanno's stay and activity in Florence see Michele
Luzzatti, "Documenti inediti su Yohanan Alemanno a Firenze (1481 e 1492-1493)," in
Bemporad and Zatelli, La cultura ebraica, pp. 71-84. In the introduction to his Hesheq
Shlomo, Alemanno pointed out the affinity between his first name, Yohanan, and
Pico's, Giovanni.
See the letter written in Jerusalem by the Spanish Kabbalist R. Abraham ben Eliezer
ha-Levi to R. Abraham of Perugia, extant in Ms. Florence, Laurenziana-Medicea Plut.
II, 35, fols. 3ob-3ib, printed and discussed by Abraham David, "A Jerusalemite Epistle
from the Beginning of the Ottoman Rule over the Land of Israel," in Chapters in the
History o/Jerusalem at the Beginning ojthe Ottoman Ages, ed. Yehudah ben Porat (Yad ben
Zvi, Jerusalem, 1989) , pp. 3 9-60 (Hebrew) ; and Lelli, "Biography and Autobiography, "
pp. 35-36. On hakham kolel or uomo universale see also Lelli, "Umanesimo Laurenziano,"
pp. 50 n. 3, 58 n. 26.
Yohanan Alemanno, Sefer Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Berlin, Or. Qu. 832. See Arthur Lesley,
"The 'Song of Solomon's Ascents': Love and Human Perfection according to a Jewish
•400-
Notes to Pages 178-182
Associate of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola" (Ph.D. diss., University of California,
Berkeley, 1976).
7. For the description and bibliography regarding this book see Fabrizio Lelli,
Yohanan Alemanno, Hay Ha-'Olamim (L'lmmortale) (Leo S. Olschki, Florence, 1995);
idem, "L'educazione ebraica"; and Michael Reuveni, "The Physical Worlds of
Jochanan Alemanno in 'Hai 'Olamim' " (Ph.D. diss., Haifa University, 2004), 2 vols.
(Hebrew).
8. The identification of Alemanno as the author of Ms. Paris, BN 849, was established by
Gershom Scholem, Peraqim le-Toldot Sifrut ha-Qabbalah (ha-Madpis, Jerusalem, 1931),
pp. 54-58 (Hebrew).
9. Yohanan Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234 (Reggio 23).
10. For more on this issue see chap. 15.
11. This is a passage from an otherwise unknown Hebrew translation of Liber de Causis, as
adduced already by Abraham Abulafia. On this work of Abulafia's, his quotation from
Liber de Causis, and the latter's reverberations see Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic
Interpretations," pp. 216-217, 220-221, 223, and the pertinent notes there.
Neoplatonic influences are more dominant in theosophic-theurgical Kabbalah than in
ecstatic Kabbalah. In the latter, some Neoplatonic motifs came to the fore in the
second stage of the development of this school, in the works of R. Yitzhaq of Acre and
in R. Nathan Harar's Sha'arei Tzedeq, whereas they are negligible in the writings of
Abulafia, where the Aristotelian influence is predominant. See more in chap. 11.
12. 'Imrei Shejer is Abulafia's last work, composed in Sicily in 1291. The passage is found in
Ms. Munich 285, fols. 3a-b.
13. Alemanno, Sefer Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Berlin, Or. Qu. 832, fols. 83a-b. See also chap. 15,
sec. 4.
14. See Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 325, 331-332, and nn. 55, 56.
15. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 159a.
16. Similar views are found in Menahem Recanati. See above, chap. 10.
17. R. Yehi'el Nissim of Pisa, Commentary on the Ten Sejirot, Ms. New York, JTS Rab. 1586,
fol. 126b. This text was copied in the various versions of the Commentary on the Ten
Sefirot composed by R. Yehi'el Nissim and those in his circle; see, e.g., Idel, "The
Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," p. 227 and n. 233. The fact that the proph-
ets are mentioned is reminiscent of the theory of the tradition that Plato studied with
Jeremiah. On this issue see more in chap. 13.
18. On this Zoharic view see M. Idel, "The Journey to Paradise: The Metamorphosis of
a Motif from a Greek Myth into Judaism," Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 2 (1982),
pp. 12-13 (Hebrew).
19. MinhatQena'ot, ed. David Kaufmann (Berlin, 1898), p. 84; see also ibid., pp. 49 and 53.
20. Yohanan Alemanno, Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1535, fol. 162b. For more
on the issue of prisca theolotjia among his Jewish contemporaries see chap. 13.
21. On this model see further Idel, Hasidism, pp. 65-81.
•401-
Notes to Pages 182-189
22. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 164a. On talismans and
Alemanno see also the text printed by Lelli, "L'educazione ebraica," pp. 118, 121-122.
23. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 164a.
24. Takhlit-he-Hakham, Ms. Munich 214, fol. 51a. On this book see chap. 16, sec. 2.
25. Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fol. 62a. See also ibid., fol. 6b.
26. See Idel, "The Concept of the Torah," pp. 49-53.
27. Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fol. 7b.
28. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Opera Omnia (Venice, 1557), p. 181; Yates, Giordano
Bruno, p. 97.
29. See above, chap. 12, note 21; and below, note 49.
30. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 2b. For the medieval Jewish
sources that influenced Alemanno see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 482-492.
31. Pico, Opera Omnia, p. 113: "Sicut vera Astrologia docet nos legere in libro Dei, ita
Cabbala docet nos legere in libro legis."
32. This view is found in Gikatilla's Sha'arei 'Orah and in Recanati's writings.
33. Alemanno, Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1535, fols. I04b-i05a.
34. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 8b.
35. See John G. Gager, Moses in Graeco-Roman Paganism (Abington Press, Nashville, 1972),
pp. 134-160.
36. R. Yohanan Alemanno, Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 140, fol. 287a.
37. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 22b.
38. Ibid., fol. 127a.
39. See Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 204-205 and the notes
there.
40. Cf. L. Smolar and M. Aberback, "The Golden Calf Episode in Postbiblical Literature,"
Hebrew Union College Annua! 39 (1968), pp. 91-116.
41. See Giordano Bruno, De Ima^inum, Sujnorum et Idearum Compositione, in Opera Latine
Conscripta, vol. 2, pt. Ill (Stuttgart, 1962), p. 102: "Cabalistarum doctrina confirmat
et exemplum Mosis qui interdum, atque Jovis favorem comparandilm vitulum aurem
erexit ad Martis item temperandum simul atque Saturni violentem aeneum serpentem
adorandum efficit." On the concept of the making of the Golden Calf as a technique to
cause the descent of spiritual forces, see also Yohanan Alemanno, Sha'ar ha-Hesheq
(Livorno, 1790), fol. 17b; and R. Shlomo Franco's untitled commentary on Abraham
ibn Ezra, Ms. Munich 15, fols. 268a-b.
42. Alemanno, Sha'ar ha-Hesheq, fol. 41b.
43. Alemanno, Sefer Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1535, fol. 15a.
44. Yitzhaq ben Yehi'el of Pisa(?), Commentary on the Ten Sejirot, Ms. London, Montefiore
316, fol. 28b.
45. See Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 310-312.
46. On Jews, Saturn, and Sabbath see A. Bouche-Leclercq, L'astrologie greque (Paris, 1899),
pp. 318, 371, 478; Yohanan H. Levi, Studies in Jewish Hellenism (Mossad Bialik, Jerusalem,
•402-
Notes to Page i8g
1969), pp. 122, 143 (Hebrew); Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, trans. John Bowden,
vol. 2 (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1974), p. 176 n. 47; Eric Zafran, "Saturn and the
Jews," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979), pp. 16-27; Jacques
Halbronn, Le monde juif et 1'astroloflie: Histoire d'un uieux couple (Arche, Milan, 1979),
pp. 84-87; Shlomo Sela, "Abraham ibn Ezra's Appropriation of Saturn," Kabbalah 10
(2004), pp. 21-53; Elliot K. Ginsburg, Sod ha-Shabbat: The Mystery oJSabbath (SUNY Press,
Albany, 1989), pp. 163-167; and Haviva Pedaya, "Sabbath, Sabbatai, and the Diminution
of Moon — The Holy Conjunction, Sign and Image," in Myth in Judaism, ed. Pedaya (Ben
Gurion University, Beer Sheva, 1996 = Eshel Beer-Sheva' 4 [1996], pp. 150-153 [Hebrew]).
47. This angel was conceived of as presiding over the people of Israel. On the nexus
between Michael and Saturn see Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition
(University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2004), p. 251.
48. See also Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 125b. See already
R. Shmuel ibn Motor, MegillatSetarim (Venice, 1554), fol. 6b. On Ibn Motot see Georges
Vajda, "Recherches sur la synthese philosophico-kabbalistique de Samuel ibn Motot,"
Archiues d'histoire doctrinale et litte'raire du Moyen Ages 27 (i960), p. 59 n. 112.
49. On this term as pointing to astral magic see Pines, "On the Term Ruhaniyyut"; idem,
"Shi'ite Terms and Conceptions in Judah Halevi's Kuzari," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic
and Islam 2 (1980), pp. 165-251, especially pp. 243-247; idem, "LeSeJer ha-Tamaretles
Macjtjidim des Kabbalists," in Hommacje a Georges Vajda, ed. G. Nahon and C. Touati
(Peeters, Louvain, 1980), pp. 333-363. On a late, Christian understanding of Kabbalah
as a pact with the devil see Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and thejeivs (JPS, Philadelphia,
1983), p. 86.
50. For this nexus see already R. Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi's Commentary on Sefer
Yetzirah (Epstein, Jerusalem, 1961), fols. 5ib~52a.
51. This understanding of sorcery as related to Saturn stems, in Jewish sources, from
R. Abraham ibn Ezra, Reshit Hokhmah, chap. 4. 1 combined the version found in a passage
of this book as explicitly quoted in R Joseph Bonfils, Tzajhat Pa'aneah, ed. David Herzog,
vol. 1 (Krakow, 1912), p. 49, with the commonly used edition of the book (cited just
below). See also ibid., p. 270. The common version of this passage, as edited and trans-
lated by Raphael Levi and Francisco Cantera, The Beginning ojTVisdom: An Astrological Treatise
by Abraham ibn Ezra (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore; Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1939), pp. xlii-xliv, does not contain the reference to incantation and sorcery.
52. These are terms for cosmical cycles according to Kabbalists, which interpreted bibli-
cal practices of cessation of agricultural works. The nexus between these two practices
and Saturn is manifest already in the passage of Abraham Abulafia and even more in
R Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi's influential Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah. See Moshe
Idel, "Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi: A New Approach to Sabbateanism," in Toward the
Millennium: Messianic Expectations jrom the Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Schaefer and Mark
Cohen (Brill, Leiden, 1998), pp. 179-180. See also above, chap. 12, note 39.
53. On this issue see Idel, "Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi," pp. 167-168.
•403-
Notes to Pages 189-191
54. On Saturn and melancholy see the important study by Raymond Klibansky, Erwin
Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturne et la melancholie, trans. L. Evrard (Gallimard, Paris, 1989).
55. Apparently hemiplegia.
56. Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fols. 940-958, which is part of a pas-
sage dealing with the sefirah of Binah. See also Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic
Interpretations," p. 209.
57. See M. Idel, "The Epistle of R. Isaac of Pisa(?) in Its Three Versions," in Qovetz 'Al Yad,
n.s. 10 (1982), pp. 166-167, J %7 n - I 4 I > 213-214 (Hebrew). I have my doubts, based on
a new manuscript of this epistle, whether the author of the three versions of this epis-
tle is Yitzhaq da Pisa or another Kabbalist. I hope to return to this topic elsewhere.
58. See Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life (Arkana, London, 1983),
pp. 20-21, 41, 59, 6g, hi. As I showed in a short note some years ago, Alemanno
translated, or perhaps only copied, an astrological passage written by a Christian
author, dealing with his conversion in 1484 as a result of the conjunction of Saturn
and Jupiter. See M. Idel, "On R. Yohanan Alemanno and Ma'amar Hoze," Qiryat Sefer 54
(1979), pp. 825-826 (Hebrew).
59. On this issue see Idel, Hasidism, pp. 65-81.
60. See Idel, "The Study Program," p. 309. This does not mean that I assume that the
magical and even some forms of talismanic views are absent in those two earlier
Kabbalists, who informed Alemanno's views, but that the magical-talismanic
elements are marginal in their systems but become central in Alemanno's.
61. For more on this issue see Idel, "Between."
62. See Raphael Patai, Jewish Alchemists (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1995),
pp. 27, 100, 293-297; and Idel, "The Study Program," p. 308.
63. Erwin Rosenthal, "Yohanan Alemanno and Occult Science," in Prismata,
Nauruussenschaftscjeschichtliche Studien: Festschrift fur Willy Hartner, ed. Y. Maeyama and
W. G. Saltzer (Wiesbaden, 1977), pp. 349-361.
64. M. Idel, "The Anthropology of Yohanan Alemanno: Sources and Influences," Topoi 7
(1988), p. 201-210; reprinted in Annali di storia dell'esecjesi 7 (1990), pp. 93-112; and the
medieval material analyzed in idem, "Man as the 'Possible' Entity in Some Jewish and
Renaissance Sources," in Coudertand Shoulson, Hebraica Veritas?, pp. 33-47.
65. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 17a.
66. Alemanno, Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1535, fol. 20a.
67. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 10a. On the divine nature of
the soul in Kabbalah see M. Idel, "Nishmat 'Eloha: On the Divinity of the Soul in
Nahmanides and His School," in Life as a Midrash: Perspectives in Jewish Psychology, ed.
S. Arzi, M. Fachler, and B. Kahana (Yediy'ot 'Aharonot, Tel Aviv, 2004), pp. 338-380
(Hebrew).
68. On the impact of Italian literature on Renaissance Jewish authors see Giulio Busi,
"Influssi italiani nella letteratura ebraica dell'eta del Rinascimento," in Correnti cultur-
alie mouimenti religiosi del Giudaismo: Atti del V Concjresso internazionale dell'AISG, ed. Bruno
Chiesa (Carucci, Rome, 1987), pp. 257-271.
•404-
Notes to Pages 192-193
Chapter 15: Jewish Mystical Thought in Lorenzo il
Magnificcs Florence
1. The latest comprehensive survey of translations and translators in Toledo seems to be
that of Simon Hayek, "Transmision de la cultura arabe al occidente cristiano," in Las
tres cultures en la corona de Castillo u los Sefardies (Junta de Castilla y Leon, Salamanca,
1990), pp. 221-241.
2. See Colette Sirat, La philosophic juiue medie'uale en pays de chre'tiente' (Presses du Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, 1988), pp. 21-23, 33~34-
3. See Wirszubski, Pico delta Mirandola, passim. I do not intend to address here the many
sixteenth-century translations, in the field of philosophy or Kabbalah, done by Jews or
converts.
4. See now Auerroe, parajrasi della "Repubblica" nella traduzione latina di Elia del Medigo, ed.
A. Coviello and Paolo Edoardo Forniciari (Leo S. Olschki, Florence, 1992).
5. See Giuseppe Sermoneta, "L'incontro culturale tra ebrei e christiani nel Medioevo e
nel Rinascimento," in Atti del VI Contjresso internazionale dell'AISG, ed. Michele Luzzati,
Michele Olivari, and Alessandra Veronese (Carruci, Rome, 1988), pp. 183-207.
Important contributions to an understanding of the processes taking place within
Italian Renaissance Jewry and its interaction with the Italian culture are found in the
following surveys: Robert Bonfil, "The Historian's Perception of the Jews in the Italian
Renaissance: Towards a Reappraisal," REJ 143 (1984), pp. 59-82; David B. Ruderman,
"Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought," in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations,
Forms, and Legacy, ed. Albert Rabil Jr., vol. 1 (University of Pennsylvania Press,
Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 382-433; idem, in his introduction to Essential Papers on Jewish
Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. D. B. Ruderman (New York University Press,
New York, 1992), pp. 1-39; andBonfil's "How Golden Was the Age of the Renaissance
in Jewish Historiography?," ibid., pp. 219-250; Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, "Jewish
Culture in Renaissance Italy: A Methodological Survey," Italia 9 (1990), pp. 63-96;
Arthur M. Lesley, "Jewish Adaption of Humanistic Concepts in Fifteenth- and
Sixteenth-Century Italy," in Ruderman, Essential Papers, pp. 45-62. See also Paul O.
Kristeller, "Jewish Contribution to Italian Renaissance Culture," Italia 4 (1985),
pp. 7-20; and Isaac E. Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith: Anti-Rationalism in Jewish
Italian Thought, 1250-1550 (Mouton, The Hague, 1967), pp. 61-149.
6. See, e.g., Paul O. Kristeller, La tradizione classica nel pensiero del Rinascimento (La Nuova
Italia Editrice, Florence, 1975).
7. Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola. Wirszubski's demonstration of the paramount
importance of the medieval kabbalistic sources for Giovanni Pico's own formulations
should be seen as part of what has been called the "revolt of the medievalists," an
approach that emphasizes the centrality of some medieval texts for Renaissance
thought. This attitude is characteristic also of many of Sermoneta's and Tirosh-
Rothschild's studies, as well as my own general approach. See Tirosh-Rothschild,
"Jewish Culture in Renaissance Italy," pp. 73-74.
•405-
Notes to Pages 194-199
8. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 69-76, 106-118.
9. Bohdan Kieszkowski, "Les rapports entre Elie del Medigo et Pic de la Mirandola," II
Rinascimento 15 (1964), pp. 41-91. See also Kalman P. Bland, "Elijah del Medigo's
Averroistic Response to the Kabbalahs of the Fifteenth-Century Jewry and Pico della
Mirandola," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 1 (1991), pp. 23-53.
10. Cf. Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 303-330; and Fabrizio Lelli, "Retorica, poetica e
linguistica nel Hay ha-'Olamim di Yohanan Alemanno" (Ph.D. diss., University of
Turin, 1990-91), pp. 305-318.
n. See Idel, "The Throne and the Seven-Branched Candlestick: Pico della Mirandola's
Hebrew Source," JWCI 40 (1977), pp. 290-292. For more on Alemanno and Pico see
B. C. Novak, "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Jochanan Alemanno," ibid., 45
(1982), pp. 125-147.
12. See David B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham
ben Mordecai Farissol (Hebrew Union College Press, Cincinnati, 1991).
13. See Umberto Cassuto, "Un rabbino fiorentino del secolo XV," Riuista israelita 3 (1906),
pp. 116-128, 156-161, 224-228; and ibid., 4 (1907), 33-37, 226-229; an d the interest-
ing analysis by Avraham Melamed, "Natural, Human, Divine: Classification of the
Law among Some 15th- and 16th-century Italian Jewish Thinkers," Italia 4 (1985),
pp. 63-81.
14. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 10-65.
15. For one important example to this effect see below, chap. 16, note 9.
16. See Idel, The Mystical Experience; idem, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah.
17. For different versions of these phenomena in Italy see Giuseppe Sermoneta,
"R. Yehudah and Immanuel of Rome: Rationalism Whose End Is Mystical Belief,"
in Revelation, Faith, Reason, ed. Moshe Hallamish and Moshe Schwartz (Bar Ilan
University Press, RamatGan, 1976), pp. 54-70 (Hebrew); Idel, The Mystical Experience,
pp. 137-138. See also chap. 16, note 16.
18. See chap. 16, sec. 2; and app. 3.
19. See Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds, pp. 26, 41-42.
20. See Daniel Carpi, Between Renaissance and Ghetto (University Publishing Project, Tel Aviv,
1989), pp. 70-72 (Hebrew).
21. Cf. Idel, "Jewish Magic from the Renaissance," pp. 86-90.
22. Ibid., pp. 94-99.
23. For details on this Kabbalist see Joseph R. Hacker, "A Collection of Episdes on the
Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Sicily and on the Fate of the Exiles," in Studies in
the History o/Jeunsh Society in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Period Presented to Projessor
Jacob Katz, ed. Immanuel Etkes and Joseph Salmon (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1980),
pp. 64-70 (Hebrew).
24. See Idel, "Particularism and Universalism," pp. 324-344.
25. See the numerous discussions of Aristotelianism in Charles Schmitt, Quentin Skinner,
Eckhard Kessler, and Jill Kraye, eds., The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
•406-
Notes to Pages 199-203
26. Cf. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 316-320, 327-330, 363-364, 389-390; and Idel,
"Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism."
27. For Alemanno see Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 310-311 n. 68. For Pico and Abulafia
see Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, index, s.v. Abulafia, Abraham; and Bachelli,
Giovanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto, p. 14.
28. Emblematic of this approach is the epithet Comes Concordiae, the prince of Concord, a
pun upon Pico's being in search of concord and being the prince of Concordia,
invented by Ficino in order to describe Pico; see Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance,
PP- 72-73-
29. See R. Yohanan Alemanno, Sha'ar ha-Hesheq (Halberstadt, i860), fol. 30b.
30. I borrow the term from Louis Gardet, Etudes de philosophic et de mystique compare'es
(J. Vrin, Paris, 1972), pp. 268-270.
31. On the relations between philosophy and Kabbalah in general see Scholem, Major
Trends, pp. 23-24; and Ravitzky, History and Faith, pp. 115-153.
32. See Idel, "Between," p. 95; idem, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations,"
pp. 219-223 and the pertinent footnotes.
33. In Hebrew sefirot, a term that can be understood in Sefer Yetzirah, the book in which this
term first occurs, also as numbers. See also Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic
Interpretations," p. 223. For a more Pythagorean interpretation of the sefirot as num-
bers, different from the theosophical understanding of this term as dealing with
divine powers, as the theosophical-theurgical Kabbalists did, see already Abraham
ibn Ezra and Abraham Abulafia, who presumably influenced Alemanno. Cf. Idel, "On
the Meanings of the Term 'Kabbalah,'" pp. 49-51. This Pythagorean emphasis on
numbers in the context of Kabbalah is reminiscent of the Pythagorean turn found in
Reuchlin's understanding of Kabbalah as the source of the mostly lost Pythagorean
philosophy. See my introduction to Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, pp. xi-xvi.
34. The unique status of the Infinite is viewed as transcending the realm of ideal numbers,
understood as sefirot.
35. Yode'i hen means literally "the knowers of the occult lore."
36. 'Eikhut ha-Devequt. This is the name given to the introduction to Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl's
Hayy binYoqtan. See Idel, "The Study Program," p. 307 n. 36;andapp. 3 in this volume.
37. This is Averroes' famous book, Tahajut al-TahaJut. See also the text in Fabrizio Lelli,
Yohanan Alemanno, Hay Ha-'Olamim (L'lmmortale) (Leo S. Olschki, Florence, 1995), p. 46.
38. Yohanan Alemanno, Sejer Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Berlin, Or. Qu. 832, fol. 83b, printed in
Idel, "Between," p. 92.
39. Yohanan Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fol. 136a.
Chapter 16: Other Mystical and Magical
Literatures in Renaissance Florence
1. See Dan, The Esoteric Theology, pp. 24-28.
2. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 119-121; and chap. 7, sec. 2, of this volume.
3. See chap. 12, sec. 1,
•407-
Notes to Pages 203-204
4. See, e.g., R. Yohanan Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fols. noa-ii5b,
which contains a shorter version of the treatise known as the Hebrew Enoch; ibid., fols.
H5b-ii7a, containing the treatise called Ma'aseh Merkauah; ibid., fols. ii/b-nob, con-
taining a part of Heikhalot Rabbati; and Klaus Herrmann, "The Reception of Heikhalot
Literature in Yohanan Alemanno's Autograph MS Paris 849," in Studies in Jewish
Manuscripts, ed. J. Dan and K. Hermann (J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 1999), pp. 9-88.
This literature is also mentioned in Yohanan Alemanno, Sefer 'Einei ha-'Edah,
Ms. Jerusalem, NUL 8° 598, fols. 54a, 100a, 117b. Long passages from this literature
were known and already quoted by R. Menahem Recanati; see Idel, R. Menahem
Recanati, 1: 119-121. See also chap. 12 above about Abraham Abulafia's knowledge of
ancient texts close to this literature.
5. See Idel, Golem, pp. 54-80.
6. See Dan, The Esoteric Theology, pp. 74-76, 219-222.
7. See, e.g., Idel, Golem, pp. 54-80, 96-118, 127-163.
8. See Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy (Littman Library of
Jewish Civilization and Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990), pp. 298-316; and now
Ariel Toaff, "Migrazioni di Ebrei Tedeschi attraverso i territori triestini e friulani fra
XIV e XV secolo," in II mondo ebraico: Gli ebrei tra Italia nord-orientale e Impero Hasburgico dal
Medioeuo all'eta contemporanea, ed. Gioacomo Todeschini and P. C. Y. Zorattini
(Pordenone, Tesi, 1991), pp. 5-29.
9. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. n-12, 16, 18, 232. A fifteenth-century Hebrew
manuscript of this text is extant in Florence, Laurenziana-Medicea Plut. I, 44.
10. Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 22-23, 59-60.
11. Idel, "The Study Program," p. 310 n. 67.
12. R. Yohanan Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 164b.
13. See Alemanno, Sefer 'Einei ha-'Edah, Ms. Jerusalem, NUL 8° 598, fol. 103b. On this
medieval book and the mystical circle to which it belongs see Yosef Dan, Studies in
Ashkenazi-Hasidic Literature (Massada, RamatGan, 1975), pp. 89-111 (Hebrew).
14. Alemanno was a very erudite scholar even by comparison with his very learned
Renaissance Christian contemporaries. For a list of the most important sources of
Alemanno's thought see Idel, "The Study Program"; and app. 3 of this volume.
15 . Tracing the huge impact of this book on subsequent medieval and Renaissance Jewish
literature is an important desideratum. See, for the time being, Idel, Golem, pp. 164,
174, 187, 190. Compare also the analysis of political views in Avraham Melamed,
"Natural, Human, Divine: Classification of the Law among Some 15th- and
16th-century Italian Jewish Thinkers," Italia 4 (1985), pp. 63-81; and idem, The
Philosopher-King in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Thought, ed. Lenn E. Goodman
(SUNY Press, Albany, 2003), especially pp. 53-54, 58-60, 213-214 nn. 98-99.
16. See Shaul Regev, "Theology and Rational Mysticism in the Writings of R. Joseph ben
Shem Tov" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1983), p. 71 (Hebrew).
17. See Allan Lazaroff, The Theology of Abraham Bibago (University of Alabama Press,
University, 1981), p. 91 n. 227.
•408-
Notes to Pages 204-206
18. See, e.g., Isaac Abravanel, Tzurot ha-Yesodot, printed together with his 'Ateret Zeqenim
(Warsaw, 1894), fol. 54b.
19. See Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 307 n. 36 and 313 nn. 78-79; Tirosh-Rothschild,
Between Worlds, pp. 84, 128-129; an d Salomon Schechter, "Notes sur Messer David
Leon," RE] 24 (1892), p. 123.
20. On Alemanno's view on this topic see Georges Vajda, L'amour de Dieu dans la the'oiotjie
juive du Moyen Age (J. Vrin, Paris, 1957), pp. 280-285; M. Idel, "The Sources of the
Circle Images in Dialoghi dAmore," Tyyun 28 (1978), pp. 162-166 (Hebrew).
21. See Yohanan Alemanno, Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 140, fol. 3a.
22. Umberto Cassuto, Gli ebrei a Firenze nell'eta del Rinascimento (Makhon ben Zvi, Jerusalem,
1967), pp. 329-330 (Hebrew version).
23. Idel, "The Study Program," p. 313 n. 79.
24. See Francois Secret, "Aegidiana Hebraica," RFJ 121 (1962), p. 412 n. 2.
25 . This case is comparable to the strong Sufi influence on the descendants ofMaimonides.
See Paul Fenton's important introduction to Ovadia Maimonide and David Maimonide,
Deux traite's de mystiquejuiue (Verdier, Lagrasse, 1987), pp. 13-111.
26. For an interesting analysis focusing on the mystical elements in this book see Sami S.
Hawi, Islamic Naturalism and Mysticism: A Philosophical Study qflbn Tufayl's Hayy bin
Yaqzan (Brill, Leiden, 1974).
27. Seeldel, "The StudyProgram," pp. 313-318; and idem, "The Anthropology of Yohanan
Alemanno: Sources and Influences," Annali di storia dell'esegesi 7 (1990), pp. 93-112.
28. See idem, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," p. 238 nn. 168, 169; and
idem, "The Sources of the Circle Images."
29. Idem, "The Anthropology of Yohanan Alemanno."
30. Idem, Ascensions on High, pp. 167-203.
31. Idem, "The Sources of the Circle Images."
32. For a recent attempt to attribute both Pico's and Leone Ebreo's discussions of the
circle images to Ficino, minimizing the importance of Al-Bataliyusi's book, which
was quoted repeatedly and explicitly by their mentors, see Shoshanah Gershenzon,
"The Circle Metaphor in Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'Amore," Da'at 29 (1992), pp. v-xvii. I
am not convinced by her arguments, and I hope to return to this topic in a later study.
33. SeeTrinkaus, In Our Likeness and Image, 1: 34.
34. See Idel, "Hermeticism and Judaism"; and app. 4 in this volume.
35. See R. Yohanan Alemanno, Sha'ar ha-Hesheq (Halberstadt, i860), fols. 8a-b. I hope to
deal with the vestiges of this magical book in a separate study.
36. Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," p. 231 n. 36.
37. See Walker's pioneering study, Spiritual and Demonic Magic. F. A. Yates added much to
Walker's treatment in confirming the literary importance of Picatrix during the
Renaissance in her Giordano Bruno. See also the important studies of Eugenio Garin,
"La diffusione di un manuale di magia," La Cultura jilosojica del rinascimento italiano,
(Florence, 1961), pp. 159-165; idem, "Astrologia e magia: Picatrix," Lo Zodiaco della vita
(Laterza, 1976), pp. 33-60; and "Postille sul Ermetismo del rinascimento," Rinascimento
•409-
Notes to Pages 206-208
16 (1976), pp. 245-246. On the influence of paganism on Picatrix see Jean Seznec, The
Suruiual ojthe Pagan Gods (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1972) . On the Hermetic
sources of Picatrix see H. and R. Kahane and Angela Pietrangle, "Picatrix and the
Talismans," Romance Philology 19 (1965-66), pp. 574-93; and David Pingree, "Some
Sources of the Ghayat al-Halam," JWCI 43 (1980), pp. 1-15. For more on Hermeticism
in the Renaissance see Paola Zambelli, L'ambigua natura della matjia (Marsilio, Venice,
1996), pp. 251-327. All the manuscripts of the Latin translation of Picatrix date from
the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. See Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 15 n. 3. For the exis-
tence of another Hermetic treatise in Florence, which was quoted in toto by Alemanno,
see Fabrizio Lelli, "Le versioni ebraiche di un testo ermetico: II Sefer Ha-Leuanah,"
Henoch 12 (1990), pp. 147-163. See also now Reimund Leicht, Astroloaumena Judaica
(Mohr/Siebeck, Tubingen, 2007), pp. 300-306.
38. Seeldel, "The Study Program," p. 3ii;andapp. 3 in this volume. In his Collectanea, Ms.
Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 121a, Alemanno includes a passage from Sejer Megalleh
'Amuqot, by R. Shlomo ben Hanokh al-Constantini, who had seen the work in the
Arabic original. Alemanno's quotation parallels what is said in the text of Sefer Mecjalleh
Amuqot, Ms. Vatican 59, fol. 6a.
39. This subject has not been discussed in the scholarly literature. Studies of the topic
have dealt for the most part with popular superstitions and magical practices but have
not considered the place of magic in the intellectual framework of the Renaissance.
See Moses A. Shulwass, The Jeius in the World ojthe Renaissance (Brill, Leiden, 1973),
pp. 328-32; Cecil Roth, The Jeuis in the Renaissance (Jewish Publication Society,
Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 59-63.
40. In his book Ma'aseh 'Efbd, Profiat Duran refers to this work by this name. Alemanno
knewDuran's book; seeldel, "The Study Program, "p. 304 n. 6. A detailed description
of Ms. Munich 214 is to be found in Moritz Steinschneider, Zur Pseudepigraphischen
Literatur (Berlin, 1862), pp. 28-31. This translation contains some variants on the orig-
inal Arabic text; one of these was discussed by Martin Plessner, "A Medieval Definition
of a Scientific Experiment in the Hebrew Picatrix," JWCI 36 (1973), pp. 358-359.
See now Leicht, Astrolocjumena Judaica, pp. 316-322.
41. See Frangois Secret, "Sur quelques traductions du Sejer Raziel," REJ 128 (1969),
pp. 223-245. More recently Alejandro Garcia Aviles has shown that the work was
translated in Toledo and was one of the first books of Jewish esotericism to be trans-
lated into a European language; "Alfonso X y el Liber Raziel: Imagenes de la magia
astral judia en el scriptorium alfonsi," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 74 (1997), pp. 21-39.
See also Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 310-311; chap. 12 and app. 3 of this volume;
and now Leicht, Astrolotjumena Judaica, pp. 187-294.
42. Ms. New York, JTS 8117, fol. 59a.
43. See, e.g., the Scholastic sources pointed out in Giuseppe Sermoneta's edition of Hillel
ben Shemu'el of Verona, Sefer Tacjmule ha-Nefesh (Israel Academy of Sciences and
Humanities, Jerusalem, 1981); idem, "Jehudah ben Mosheh ben Daniel Romano,
•410-
Notes to Pages 209-213
traducteur de Saint Thomas," in Homtnage a Georges Vajda, ed. G. Nahon and C. Touati
(Peeters, Louvain, 1980), pp. 235-262; and now Caterina Rjgo, "Un'antologia
filosofica di Yehuda b. Mosheh Romano," Italia 10 (1993), pp. 73-104.
44. In some philosophical and kabbalistic writings in the Middle Ages several forms of
magic were regarded as legitimate, notably the Avicennan view that by the cleaving of
the soul to the supernal spiritual entities someone can influence processes taking
place here below. See, e.g., Idel, "lewish Magic from the Renaissance."
45. See Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 156.
46. See Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 216-218.
47. See Stephane Toussaint, "Ficino's Orphic Magic or Jewish Astrology and Oriental
Philosophy?: A Note on Spiritus, the Three Books on Life, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zarza,"
Accademia 2 (2000), pp. 19-33; Bacchelli, Giouanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto, pp. 15,
21-30, 100-102; and chap. 21 and app. 3 of this volume.
48. Cf. Idel, Hasidism, pp. 41-43.
Chapter 17: Spanish Kabbalists in Italy after the Expulsion
1. See, e.g., Cecil Roth, "The Spanish Exiles of 1492 in Italy," in Homenaje a Millas-
Vallicrosa, vol. 2 (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientfficas, Barcelona, 1956),
pp. 293-302; Renata Segre, "Sephardic Settlements in Sixteenth-Century Italy:
A Historical and Geographical Survey," Mediterranean Historical Review 6 (1992),
pp. n-127. On the cultural environment in Italy in this period see David B. Ruderman,
"The Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought," in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations,
Forms, and Legacy, ed. Albert Rabil, vol. 1 (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia,
1988), pp. 382-433; and Robert Bonfil's important study, Rabbis andjeuiish Communities
in Renaissance Italy, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
and Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990); as well as Sarah Heller Wilensky, The
Philosophy of Isaac Arama (Bialik Institute, Jerusalem, 1956) (Hebrew).
2. The single piece of evidence about the presence of this Kabbalist in Italy is a hint by
R. Yitzhaq ben Hayyim ha-Kohen, Ms. Oxford, Heb. f. 16, Catalogue Neubauer,
no. 2770, fol. 48b.
3. See Gershom Scholem and Malachi Beit-Arie, Sefer Meshareh Qitrin (Jewish National
and University Library, Jerusalem, 1978) (Hebrew), which presents the most
important bibliography on this Kabbalist in the introduction.
4. Ms. Oxford, Heb. f. 16, Catalogue Neubauer, no. 2770, fol. 25a, indicates that Hayyim
ha-Kohen visited Ferrara. See M. Idel, "Chronicle of an Exile: R. Isaac ben Hayyim
ha-Kohen of Jativa," in Jews and Conuersos at the Time ojthe Expulsion, ed. Y. Assis and
Y. Kaplan (Merkaz Shazar Center, Jerusalem, 1999), pp. 259-271 (Hebrew).
5. Cf. Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 422-425. On this figure see now Michal Oron,
"Autobiographical Elements in the Writings of Kabbalists from the Generation of the
Expulsion," Mediterranean Historical Reuieiu 6 (1991), pp. 102-106.
6. Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 404-422.
•411-
Notes to Pages 214-215
7. The reactions of Sephardic Jews in Italy are more evident in the Ferrara edition, whose
introduction is a bit longer, containing details not included in the Mantuan edition.
Both of them were printed in 1558. On the various commentaries on Sefer Ma'arekhet
ha-'Elohut see Gershom Scholem, "On the Questions Related to Sefer Ma'arekhet
ha-'Elohut and Its Commentators," Qiryat Sefer 21 (1944), pp. 284-295 (Hebrew).
8. Though not a full-fledged Kabbalist, Yavetz was sympathetic to this lore but very crit-
ical toward Jewish philosophy; this attitude certainly created an affinity between the
two expellees. Although I assume that Hayyat and Yavetz did not meet before their
encounter in Mantua, their trajectory after the expulsion is similar. On Yavetz see Isaac
E. Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith: Anti-Rationalism in Jewish Italian Thought,
1250-1650 (Mouton, The Hague, 1967), pp. 133-149; Gedaliah Nigal, "The Opinions
of R. Joseph Yawetz on Philosophy and Philosophers, Torah and Commandments,"
Eshel Beer-Sheva' 1 (1976), pp. 258-287 (Hebrew); Ira Robinson, "Halakha, Kabbala,
and Philosophy in the Thought of Joseph Jabez," Sciences religieuses/Studies in Religion
11:4 (1982), pp. 389-402.
9. Cf. Psalms 27:4. Barzilay correctly mentions Yavetz's basically positive attitude toward
Kabbalah; Between Reason and Faith, p. 143. Scholem's assessment that Yavetz's attitude
to Kabbalah, "like that toward the philosophy of Maimonides, is one of extreme
reserve," is unfounded; Sabbatai Sew, p. 21. In his 'Or ha-Hayyim, quoted by Scholem,
ibid., Yavetz criticizes only the study of Kabbalah by people who are not prepared to
encounter this esoteric lore. Yavetz's reservations may be understood in the context of
the development of the study of Kabbalah in Italy, where relatively young persons,
such as Alemanno and David Messer Leon, started to study Kabbalah.
10. As Gottlieb has shown, the author was an Italian Kabbalist named Reuven Tzarfati;
see his Studies, pp. 357-369; and chap. 11 of this volume.
11. Despite Hayyat's criticisms of this commentary, many parts of it were printed in the
1558 Mantuan edition of Sejer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut, as well as those copied by Hayyat
himself in his Minhat Yehudah. As the printer of this edition, R. Immanuel of Benivento,
acknowledged, Hayyat was not ready to leave out the views of the anonymous Kabbalist
even though he had reservations about some of them.
12. Compare also the description of R. Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim regarding the dispersion and
fragmentation of the Zohar. This issue merits a detailed discussion that cannot be
pursued here.
13. Hayyat quoted long and numerous passages from the latter layer of the Zoharic
literature, Tiqqunei Zohar. The assumption that the preoccupation with the later layers
of the Zohar saved the lives of the Kabbalists recurs in another contemporary docu-
ment; see Meir Benayahu, "A Source about the Exiles from Spain in Portugal and Their
Departure to Saloniki after the Decree of 1506," Sefunot 11 (1971-1978), p. 261.
Therefore, the assumption that the Zohar was canonized "consequent upon the expul-
sion" (Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 1: 25) is erroneous, at least insofar as the
Spanish Kabbalists are concerned. On the canonization of the Zohar see Boaz Huss,
" 'Sefer ha-Zohar' as a Canonical, Sacred, and Holy Text: Changing Perspectives of the
•412-
Notes to Pages 215-216
Book of Splendor between the Thirteenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Journal of Jewish
Thought and Philosophy 7 (1997), pp. 257-307.
14. See Hayyat, Minhat Yehudah, fol. 165b.
15. On the basis of detecting Yohanan Alemanno's extensive quotations from Hayyat's
work, in his Collectanea and in his untitled treatise extant in Ms. Paris, BN 849, which
was written in 1498, I propose dating the composition of Minhat Yehudah to between
1495 and 1498. Seeldel, "The Study Program, "p. 330. G. Scholem dated the commen-
tary to 1494-1500; "On the Questions," p. 292. However, the earlier date is impossible
because in 1494 Hayyat was in Naples, and he mentions the conquest of the city by
the French during this year. The later date is improbable because Alemanno quoted
the book already in 1498.
16. On this issue see Idel, Messianic Mystics, p. 138.
17. See, e. g., Rachel Elior, "Messianic Expectations and Spiritualization of Religious Life
in the Sixteenth Century," REJ 145, nos. 1-2 (1986), p. 36 and n. 4, where she refers to
Hayyat in the context of her claim that he is representative of those who expressed
"various degrees of detachment from mundane life while striving to attain cultural
segregation and a comprehensive spiritualization of all Jewish life." Since no specific
page of a pertinent discussion is mentioned in the article, my perusal of the two
editions of Minhat Yehudah was not helpful in detecting these discussions or new for-
mulations or particular emphasis. Perhaps in new manuscripts of Hayyat's writings
someone will be able to detect such a shift.
18. Hayyat, Minhat Yehudah, fol. 155b.
19. See ibid., fol. 177b, where he writes: "as I have been compelled, according to the [view
of] the Zohar" (Fcefi she-helchrahti mi-Sefer ha-Zohar).
20. See ibid., fols. 94a-b: "If the view of the rabbi is that the 'Atarah [namely the last sefi-
rah] is not a recipient of damage because of the sins of Israel, let this view stand alone
[Iceuodo bi-meqomo munah], since it is a philosophical speculation ['Iyyun jilosoji], but
not a true view, [representative of] the wisdom of Kabbalah." Thus, perceptively
detecting the philosophical background of some passages in Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut,
Hayyat does not hesitate to refute them in the name of what he considers to be the
true, namely mythical, stand of theosophical Kabbalah.
21. On the antimythical attitude of this book see Gotdieb, Studies, pp. 317-343.
22. See Hayyat, Minhat Yehudah, fols. 4ia-b, 42b, 44b.
23. Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 399, 430 n. 25.
24. Only a very short passage of his, a pseudo-Zoharic eschatological passage written in
Spain before the expulsion and transmitted by Ibn Shraga, was printed in Liqqutei
Shikhehah u-Jeah (Ferrara, 1556).
25. The bibliography on this Kabbalist is very limited, the most important discussion
being Tishby's printing and analysis of his short messianic treatise; see Tishby,
Messianism, pp. 87-97 ar, d !3 I_I 49 and nn. 111-112. Although the important text
published by Tishby regarding the four stages of redemption reflects an explicit mes-
sianism, in Ibn Shraga's Commentary on the Liturgy, Ms. Jerusalem, 8° 3921, fols. 8oa-b,
•413-
Notes to Pages 216-218
he discusses the same topic without even hinting at any actual meaning of this theme.
Just as in the case of Hayyat, his kabbalistic writings, which were also well known if
we are to judge from the number of extant manuscripts, do not betray a substantial
interest in messianism. Compare above, note 17.
26. See Ms. London, British Library, Add. 27034, fol. 374a. Cf. Gershom Scholem, "The
Real Author of the Forged Text, in the Language of the Zohar in the Lifetime of Rabbi
Abraham ha-Levi: Rabbi Joseph ibn Shraga or Rabbi David of Argiento," Qiryat Sefer 8
(1931), pp. 262-265 (Hebrew), where the question of the place named Agrigento is
addressed. As in the case of the two other Kabbalists discussed above, the Sephardi
Kabbalist is writing for an Italian audience.
27. See the quotation, without attribution, of a Zoharic passage from Midrash ha-Ne'elam,
copied already in a manuscript at the beginning of the fourteenth century, in
Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1663, fols. 1343-1363, printed in M. Idel, "An Unknown Text
from Midrash ha-Ne'elam, "in The Age of the Zohar, ed. J. Dan (Institute for Jewish Studies,
Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1989), pp. 73-87, especially p. 78 (Hebrew).
28. See Alexander Marx, "Le faux Messie Ascher Lemlein," REJ 61 (1911), pp. 135-138;
Kupfer, "Visions," pp. 390-392, 396-397, 407-423; Tishby, Messianism, p. 91 n. 285.
Marx's text is corrupted, and although the topic dealt with may be relevant to some issues
related to the dominant situation in the generation of the expulsion, the scholars who
have dealt with these issues did not read the pertinent material extant in manuscripts.
29. Shortly before this controversy over metempsychosis, an even larger controversy over
the same issue erupted in Candia, in Crete; see Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 370-395; Brian
Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth: Reincarnation in Early Modern Italian Kabbalah (Brill,
Leiden, Boston, 2009), pp. 41-101; and chap. 12 of this volume.
30. See Kupfer, "Visions," p. 407.
31. Lemlein's list of sources includes only one book recommended by Hayyat, Sefer Yetzirah,
but praises highly Abulafia's Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', which Hayyat had criticized. See
Kupfer, "Visions," p. 412.
32. On the tensions between Ashkenazis and Sephardis in this period in general see
Hayyim Hillel ben Sasson, "Exile and Redemption through the Eyes of the Spanish
Exiles," in Yitzhak F. Baer Jubilee Volume, ed. S. W. Baron, B. Dinur, S. Ettinger, and I.
Halpern (Historical Society of Israel, Jerusalem, i960), pp. 221-222 (Hebrew).
33. R. Asher Lemlein, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1663, fol. 129b; Ms. Cambridge, Add. 651,7,
fol. 13a.
34. BT, Babba Batra, fol. 10b.
35. Lemlein, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1663, fols. 129b, 130b, 132b.
36. For more on these issues see Idel, "Particularism and Universalism." On the different
functions of Kabbalah in Italy, though in a later period, see also Robert Bonfil,
"Changes in the Cultural Patterns of a Jewish Society in Crisis: Italian Jewry at the
Close of the Sixteenth Century," Jewish History 3:2 (1988), pp. 11-30; M. Idel, "Judah
Muscato: A Late Renaissance Jewish Preacher," in Preachers ojthe Italian Ghetto, ed.
David B. Ruderman (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992), pp. 41-66.
.414.
Notes to Pages 220-221
Chapter is: Two Diverging Types of
Kabbalah in Late-Fifteenth-Century Italy
1. Hayyat, MinhatYehudah, fols. 3b~4a. The list of recommended kabbalistic books faith-
fully reflects the kabbalistic sources that informed most of the discussions in both
R. Yehudah Hayyat and R. Joseph Alqastiel. See the titles quoted in the various pages
of this important kabbalistic text, edited by Gershom Scholem in "To the Knowledge
of Kabbalah in the Eve of the Expulsion," Tarbitz 24 (1955), pp. 167-206 (Hebrew).
Likewise, see the mention of three commentaries on Nahmanides' kabbalistic secrets
and some folios from the book of the Zohar in an epistle from R. Yitzhaq Mor Hayyim,
a Sephardic Kabbalist, to R. Yitzhaq of Pisa. The context makes clear that the Italian
Kabbalist did not possess these writings. See Ya'el Nadav, "An Epistle of the Qabbalist
R. Isaac Mar Hayyim Concerning the Doctrine of 'Supernal Lights,' " Tarbitz 26 (1957),
p. 458 (Hebrew). For an analysis of this text as related to a certain type of memory
technique see Moshe Idel, "Memento Dei — Remarks on Remembering in Judaism," in
II senso delta memoria: Arti dei conuetjni Lincei, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, vol. 195
(Rome, 2003), pp. 169-171.
2. Hayyat, MinhatYehudah, fol. 3a.
3. Ibid., fol. 3b. It seems that Hayyat, like R. Jacob Yavetz, who also arrived in Mantua
after the expulsion, was concerned about the dissemination of Kabbalah in larger
circles.
4. The word sha'ar does not occur in the two editions of Minhat Yehudah, but I have no
doubt that it is a mistake by Hayyat.
5. The words ve-ha-'olam stand, in my opinion, for another book by Isaac ibnLatif, which
is not mentioned in the Mantuan edition of Minhat Yehudah. On Ibn Latif's books and
views see Heller Wilensky, "Isaac ibn Latif — Philosopher or Kabbalist?"
6. The word rabim, "many," occurs only in the Ferrara edition (1558), but there is no
reason to doubt that it is authentic, since it also occurs in Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana
1639, fol. 3b.
7. See, e.g., Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1639, fol. 3b.
8. This epithet occurs only in the Ferrara edition.
9. There were Kabbalists in this generation who, despite their general opposition to
philosophy, were very positive toward Maimonides' thought, understood as an
attempt to answer the spiritual needs of his generation by offering a Jewish response
to alien philosophy. See, e.g., R. Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi's stand, elaborated in
Idel, Maimonides et la mystique juiue, pp. 55-56; English version, pp. 75-76.
10. Mateh Resha', a pun on the name Motot. On his thought see Georges Vajda, "Recherches
sur la synthese philosophico-kabbalistique de Samuel ibn Motot," Archives d'histoire
doctrinale et litte'raire du Mouen Ages 27 (i960), pp. 29-63.
11. R. Yohanan Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 64b; Idel, "The
Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 215-229; and idem, "The Study
Program," p. 309.
•415-
Notes to Pages 221-223
12. The various anonymous quotations from Hayyat's book found in Alemanno's manu-
scripts are described in Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 330-331.
13. Alemanno's Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, which contains quotations from
a huge variety of sources, mentions the Zohar only a few times at the end, between fols.
135a and 165a, and only as part of Hayyat's Minhat Yehudah, which is however never
named. Thus we may conclude that he did not have a copy of the Zohar. In Alemanno's
earlier composition, Sejer Hesheq Shlomo, he refers to the Zohar only twice, and in both
cases it is reasonable to assume that he took his material from Recanati's Commentary
on the Torah. In his later books there are several quotations from the Zohar, mostly in
Hebrew versions. There is thus a significant shift between his earlier ignorance of the
Zohar and the much greater acquaintance with it discernible in his last, incomplete
commentary on Genesis, 'Einei ha-'Edah.
14. See Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of Kabbalah"; idem, "Jewish
Magic from the Renaissance," pp. 82-117; idem, Kabbalah: Neu; Perspectives, p. 256.
15. See Moshe Idel, "Inquiries into the Doctrine of Sejer ha-Meshiu," Sefunot, n.s. 2
(=vol. 17, ed. J. Hacker [Makhon ben Tzvi, Jerusalem]) (1983), pp. 232-242 (Hebrew).
16. For details on the whereabouts of this Kabbalist see Joseph R. Hacker, "A Collection
of Epistles on the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Sicily and on the Fate of the
Exiles," in Studies in the History ojjeuush Society in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Period
Presented to Professor Jacob Katz, ed. Immanuel Etkes and Joseph Salmon (Magnes Press,
Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 64-70 (Hebrew).
17. M. Idel, "Between the Conceptions of the Sefirot as Essence and Instruments in the
Renaissance Period," Italia 3:1-2 (1982), pp. 89-90 (Hebrew).
18. Published by Yael Nadav, "The Epistle of R. Isaac Mor Hayyim on the Doctrine of the
Zahzahot," Tarbitz 26 (1957), pp. 448-449 (Hebrew).
19. Ibid., p. 458.
20. See A. W. Greenup, "A Kabbalistic Episde by R. Isaac ben Samuel b. Hayyim Sephardi, "
Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s. 21 (1931), p. 370. Later, on p. 374, he describes the kab-
balistic theosophy as dealing with profound matters, concerning which "the absence
of inquiry is better than its existence." See also Nadav, "Episde," pp. 448, 455, 456.
21. De Balmes's apparendy single kabbalistic treatise, an Aristotelian commentary on the
ten sefirot, 'I^eret ha-'Asiriyah, is extant in a unique manuscript, and has been printed
recently by Raphael Cohen (Jerusalem, 1998). I hope to analyze it elsewhere. See for the
time being Esther Goldenberg's important remark in her "Medieval Linguistics and
Good Hebrew," Leshonenu 54 (1990), pp. 203-205 (Hebrew); and Fabrizio Lelli,
"Cabbala e aristotelismo in Italia tra XV e XVI secolo: Le 'radici' nell' 'Iggeret ha-'asirya'
('Lettera della decade') di Avraham ben Me'ir de Balmes," in Aristotle and the Aristotelian
Tradition, ed. Ennio de Bellis (Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2008), pp. 209-222.
22. See Moshe Idel, "The Epistle of R. Isaac of Pisa(?) in Its Three Versions," Qouetz 'A! Yad,
n.s. 10 (1982), pp. 172-173, 181-184 (Hebrew).
23. See Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds, pp. 211-218, 231-236; idem, "Sefirot as the
Essence of God in the Writings of David Messer Leon," AJS Review 7-8 (1982-83),
•416-
Notes to Pages 223-225
pp. 409-425. Despite his openness to general philosophical views in his more specu-
lative thought, David Messer Leon was deeply influenced by the particularist Ashkenazi
approach to Halakhah. Although I do not wish to generate another simplistic dichot-
omy between Sephardic particularism and Italian universalism, at least insofar as
Kabbalah is concerned, such an opposition seems to me significant. Compare Robert
Bonfil, "The Historical Perception of the Jews in the Italian Renaissance: Towards a
Reappraisal," REJ 143 (1984), pp. 75-79. In other fields, such as philosophy, Sephardi
authors such as Yehudah Abravanel, better known as Leone Ebreo, were much more
open-minded than their Kabbalist contemporaries.
24. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 136-152; Idel, "The Epistle of R. Isaac of
Pisa(?),"pp. 182-183 n. 118.
25. See Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, pp. 39-40. Some discussions of Kabbalah
and Pythagoreanism are found already in Pico; see Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola,
pp. 122, 187, 197-199; and G. Lloyd Jones's introduction to Reuchlin's De Arte
Cabalistica, pp. 19-20. On the nexus between Pico's view of mystical mathematics and
that of Reuchlin see Ernst Cassirer, "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: A Study in the
History of Renaissance Ideas," Journal ofthe History of Ideas 3 (1942), p. 143.
26. Reuchlin, On the Art ojthe Kabbalah, pp. 39-40. Interestingly, some Jewish traditions
about the transmission of ancient Jewish mysticism cited Italy as a major station on the
westward trajectory of this mystical lore. These traditions are also found in Hasidei
Ashkenaz literature, which is replete with numerological speculations. See Dan,
The Esoteric Theolocjy, pp. 14-17; Ivan Marcus, Piety and Society (Brill, Leiden, 1981),
pp. 67-68. Since some ofthe speculative writings ofthe Jewish German masters were
translated by Flavius Mithridates (see Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, pp. 11-12, 16,
18), and since this lore was generally known in Italy, maybe Reuchlin was influenced by
these traditions. However, there is no attribution of any role to Pythagoras in the Jewish
Ashkenazi traditions, although this figure was related during the Renaissance to other
aspects of Kabbalah, especially metempsychosis. See Idel, "Differing Conceptions,"
pp. 158-160; Ruderman, Kabbalah, Ma^ic, and Science, index, s.v. Pythagoras.
27. Reuchlin, On the Art erf the Kabbalah, p. 39. See also ibid., p. 43.
28. See also Idel, "Jewish Magic from the Renaissance," pp. 82-90.
29. See his statement in Nadav, "Epistle," p. 456.
30. Ibid.
31. On Recanati's position see Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 308-310; Idel, Kabbalah: Nem
Perspectives, pp. 143-144.
32. Nadav, "Episde," p. 458.
33. See Greenup, "A Kabbalistic Episde," p. 375; Nadav, "Episde," pp. 447, 458.
34. In fact Mor Hayyim intended to write a more comprehensive critique of Recanati's
stand — see Nadav, "Epistle," p. 458 — but we do not know whether he realized this
plan.
35. For the text and analysis ofthe manuscript version of Alemanno's Hesheq Shlomo in
Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 140, see Idel, "Between," pp. 90-95.
•417-
Notes to Pages 225-228
36. R. Yohanan Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 64b; and Idel,
"The Study Program," pp. 329-330.
37. Kupfer, "Visions," p. 397
38. Greenup, "A Kabbalistic Epistle," p. 370.
39. See the passage from Sefer Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 140, in Idel,
"Between," p. 91. The term meyuhas, used here to refer to the linkage between the
Zohar and its traditionally accepted author, R. Shimeon bar Yohai, is ambiguous in
Alemanno's formulation. It may betray some doubt about the correctness of the
attribution.
40. A meticulous list of the translated kabbalistic books and a detailed analysis of
these translations can be found in Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola, passim. The signifi-
cance of Mithridates' choice of texts to translate in order to promote a better under-
standing of the history of the Jewish kabbalistic literature still requires detailed
research.
41. The first to observe that the Zohar was not known — despite the quotations of it that
were available through Menahem Recanati's writings — by the first two important
Christian Kabbalists active in Italy was Francois Secret, Le Zohar chez les kabbalistes
chre'tiens de la Renaissance (Durlacher, Paris, 1958), p. 25. See also Wirszubski, Pico della
Mirandola, pp. 55, 253. Compare, however, Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, 1: 33. See
also the important remarks of Jordan S. Penkower, "A New Inquiry into R Eliahu
Levita's Massoret ha-Massoret: The Belatedness of the Vowel Signs and the Critique of
the Zohar," Italia 8 (1989), pp. 7-73 (Hebrew), who pointed out that the "evidence" on
the "ancient" existence of the vowel signs, found in the allegedly ancient Zohar, was
not accepted by Levita.
42. See Secret, Le Zohar chez les kabbalistes chre'tiens, pp. 25-26. On the possibility that an
Aramaic text, quoted by Christian Kabbalists in Spain and attributed to the Zoharic
literature but fraught with Christian implications, may stem from a lost, though
genuine, fragment of the Zohar, see Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, pp. 140-145.
Chapter 19: Jewish ICabbalah in Christian Garb
1. On problems related to tracing the origins of complex religious phenomena, see
M. Idel, "On Binary 'Beginnings' in Kabbalah-Scholarship," Aporematha: Kritische
Studien zur Philoloflietjechichte 5 (2001), pp. 313-337.
2. See Idel, "Defining Kabbalah."
3. See Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, "Joachim von Fiore und das Judentum," in Miscellania
Medieualia, vol. 4: Judentum im Mirtelalter, ed. P. Wilpert (Berlin, 1966), pp. 228-263;
Marjorie Reeves and B. Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae ofjoachim of Fiore (Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1972), pp. 40-43. See also Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," p. 134. On the
possible Jewish background ofjoachim see Robert E. Lerner, Feast of Saint Abraham:
Medieual Millenarians and the Jeius (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia,
2000). See also now Hames, Like Amjels on Jacob's Ladder.
•418-
Notes to Pages 228-229
4. Joaquin Carreras Artau, "La 'Allocutio super Tetragrammaton' de Arnaldo de Vilanova,"
Sefarad 9 (1949), pp. 75-105; J. M. Millas-Vallicrosa, "Nora bibliografica acerca
de las relationes entre Arnaldo de Vilanova y la cultura judaica," Sefarad 12 (1956),
pp. 149-153; and Harold Lee, "Scrutamini Scripturas: Joachimist Themes and Figurae in
the Early Religious Writing of Arnold of Vilanova," JWC1 37 (1974), pp. 33-56.
5. SeeLiebes, Studies in the Zohar, pp. 151-152.
6. See Moshe Idel, "Ramon Lull and Ecstatic Kabbalah: A Preliminary Observation,"
Journal of the Warbunj and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988), pp. 170-174; idem, "Dujmtates
and Kauod: Two Theological Concepts in Catalan Mysticism, " Studia Lulliana 3 6 (1996) ,
pp. 69-78; and Harvey J. Hames, The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the
Thirteenth Century (Brill, Leiden, 2000). I wonder whether hints found in two epistles
belonging to Abulafia's late writings — Sheua' Netiuot ha-Torah, p. 3; and Ve-Zot
li-Yhudah, p. 28 — reflect his awareness of the existence of scholars whom he would
call non-Jewish Kabbalists. I hope to return to this issue in another study.
7. Libra de !a caza, ed. J. Gutierrez de la Vega, in Biblioteca uenatoria, 5 vols. (M. Tello, Madrid,
1877-99), 3 : 4; an d Norman Roth, "Jewish Collaborators in Alfonso's Scientific Work,"
in Alfonso X the Learned of Castile and His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance, ed. Robert I.
Burns, S.J. (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1991), pp. 60, 225 n. 7.
8. J. L. Blau, The Christian Interpretation o/theCabalah in the Renaissance (Kennicat Press, New
York, 1944).
9. Secret's most comprehensive studies on Christian Kabbalah are Le Zohar chez les
kabbalistes Chretiens de la Renaissance (Librairie Durlacher, Paris, 1958) and Les kabbalistes
chre'tiens de la Renaissance (Dunod, Paris, 1964).
10. See especially Yates, Giordano Bruno, pp. 84-143, 257-274. For a critique of the
paramount importance Yates attributed to Hermetic thought for the intellectual physi-
ognomy of the Renaissance see Brian Copenhaver, "Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus,
and the Question of a Philosophy of Magic in the Renaissance," in Hermeticism and the
Renaissance, ed. I. Merkel and Allen G. Debus (Folger Books, Washington, D.C., 1988),
pp. 79-110.
n. Yates, The Occult Philosophy, pp. 189-190. For more on her position see Concluding
Remarks in this volume.
12. See Wirszubski's classic Pico della Mirandola and a collection of his studies, mostiy in
Hebrew, titled Bein ha-Shitin (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1990). See more recentiy Paola
Zambelli, "Pico, la cabala e l'Osservanza francescana. Un inedito commento all
<Tesi> di Pico scampato all Sacco di Roma," Archiuio storico Italiano 152 (1994),
pp. 735-765, reprinted in her L'apprendista stre^one: Astrologia, cabala e arte lulliana in Pico
della Mirandola e setjuaci (Saggi Masilio, Venice, 1995), pp. 173-200; S. A. Farmer,
Syncretism in the West: Pico's goo Theses (i486) (Arizona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, Tempe, 1998); Brian P. Copenhaven, "The Secret of Pico's
Oratio: Cabala and Renaissance Philosophy," Midiuest Studies in Philosophy 26 (2002),
pp. 56-81; and idem, "Magic and Dignity of Man, De-Kanting Pico's Oration," in The
•419-
Notes to Pages 229-233
Italian Renaissance in the Twentieth Century, ed. A. J. Grieco, M. Rocke, and P. F. Superbi
(Leo S. Olschki, Florence, 2002), pp. 295-320.
13. The Great Parchment: Flavius Mithridates' Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English
Version, ed. Giulio Busi with Simonetta M. Bondoni and Saverio Campanini (Nino
Aragno Editore, Turin, 2004).
14. Bacchelli, Giovanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto.
15. See Paul Oscar Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, vol. 1 (Rome, 1956),
pp. 221-247; David B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of
Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol (Hebrew Union College Press, Cincinnati, 1991), pp. 35-40;
idem, "Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio's Appearance in Italy as Seen through the Eyes of
an Italian Jew," Renaissance Quarterly 28 (1975), pp. 309-322; Idel, "Hermeticism and
Judaism," pp. 69-70; Wouter Hanegraaff, "Sympathy or the Devil: Renaissance Magic
and the Ambivalence ofTdols," Esoterica 2 (2000), pp. 1-43; his introduction inHanegraaff-
Bouthoorn, Lodouico Lazzarelli, pp. 32 ff. ; and Busi, The Great Parchment, pp. 96-97.
16. I see here an attempt by Pico to establish for himself a singular contribution parallel to
Ficino's.
17. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Heptaplus, or Discourse on the Seuen Days oJCreation, trans.
J. Brewer McGawn (Philosophical Library, New York, 1977), introduction to part III,
pp. 51-52.
18. Farmer, Syncretism in the West, p. 523. For more on Pico and Judaism see Bacchelli,
Giouanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto, pp. 63-69.
19. See the introduction by Nicolas le Fevre de la Boderie to the French translation of
Francesco Giorgio's De Harmonia Mundi (Paris, 1579) by his brother, Guy le Fevre de la
Boderie.
20. See Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 190-191. A similar
combination of Kabbalah with other types of speculative literature is visible in the
writings of some Jewish authors during the Renaissance and later. For more on
Kabbalah and Neoplatonism in the Renaissance see idem, "Jewish Kabbalah and
Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance," in Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought,
ed. Lenn E. Goodman (SUNY Press, Albany, 1993), pp. 322-324, 331-344.
21. Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 188, 219-220, 226-227.
22. Ibid., pp. 223-228. For more on Christian Kabbalah see the important study of
Bernard McGinn, "Cabalists and Christians: Reflections on Cabala in Medieval
and Renaissance Thought," in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, ed. R. H. Popkin
and G. M. Weiner (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1994), pp. n-34; and
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggeman, ed., Christliche Kabbala (J. Thorbecke, Ostfildern, 2003).
23. See Moshe Idel, "Italy in Safed, Safed in Italy: Toward an Interactive History of
Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah," in Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern
Italy, ed. David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (University of Pennsylvania Press,
Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 248-252.
24. Scholem, Origins ojthe Kabbalah, p. 424.
•420-
Notes to Pages 234-240
25. See Yates, The Occult Philosophy, pp. 23-49; Chaim Wirszubski, "Francesco Giorgio's
Commentary on Giovanni Pico's Kabbalistic Theses," JWCI 32 (1969), pp. 171-199;
and Giulio Busi, "Francesco Zorzi, a Methodical Dreamer," in The Christian Kabbalah:
Jewish Mystical Books and Their Christian Interpreters, ed. Joseph Dan (Harvard College
Library, Cambridge, Mass., 1997), pp. 97-125.
26. See the monumental contributions of Wirszubski, Sermo de Passione Domini and Pico
dellaMirandola.
27. The attempt by Catherine Swietlicki to argue that kabbalistic elements are to be found
in the writings of some Renaissance Spanish figures seems to me to be an exaggera-
tion; see her Spanish Christian Kabbalah (University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1986)
and my review of this book in Jewish Quarterly Reuiew 78 (1988), pp. 310-313.
Chapter 20: Anthropoids from the
Middle Ages to Renaissance Italy
1. Yehuda Liebes, "GoleminGematriahHokhmah,"QiryatSefer63 (i99i),pp. 1305-1322,
especially p. 1305 (Hebrew).
2. See Idel, Kabbalah and Eros, pp. 50-51, 57-58, etc.
3. Idel, Golem, pp. 54-95.
4. On this issue see more in sec. 9. On the centrality of language and reflections about its
nature in Italian Kabbalah see also app. 2. Abulafia and Alemanno evince a much
greater interest in language than in performance of the commandments as found in
theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah, including Recanati. See also Moshe Idel, "The
Kabbalistic Interpretations of the Secret of 'Arayyot in Early Kabbalah," Kabbalah 12
(2004), pp. 89-199 (Hebrew).
5. See Edward L. Greenstein, "God's Golem: The Creation of the Human in Genesis 2,"
in Creation in Jewish and Christian Tradition, ed. Henning G. Reventlow and Yair Hoffman
(Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 2002), pp. 219-239; and Idel, "Golems and
God," pp. 225-228.
6. See, e.g., M. Idel, "The Image of Man above the Sefirot: R. David ben Yehudah he-
Hasid's Doctrine of the Supernal Sefirot [Tzahtzahot] and Its Evolution," Da'at 4 (1980),
pp. 41-55 (Hebrew).
7. See Idel, Golem, pp. 134-143.
8. Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390.
9. On this issue see Idel, Golem, pp. 96-104.
10. Ms. Cambridge, Add. 647, fol. 19a.
n. Ibid., fol. 19b.
12. See Idel, Golem, pp. 149-150, where I analyze a unique manuscript found in Moscow
that in my opinion should be added to the material belonging to R. Moshe Azriel or his
circle, such as the student who copied R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, Commentary on the
Seuenty Names of Metatron, Ms. Rome, Angelica 46. This manuscript material was
ignored in the recent analysis by Dan, The "Unique Cherub" Circle.
•421-
Notes to Pages 240-247
13. Namely the third letter of the third unit of three letters.
14. This term is used in some cases in order to point to a Golem. See Idel, Golem,
p. 114 n. 13.
15. This instruction reflects the importance of solitude in Abulafia's mystical
technique. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 9, 38; idem, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,
pp. 108-111.
16. Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390, fols. gia-g2b; Ms. Milan, Ambrosiana 52, fols. ina-n8b;
Ms. Paris, BN 763, fols. 26a-28a; Ms. Paris, BN 776, fol. 163a. The last source is part
of Abulafia's Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba' and thus constitutes a linkage to Abulafia.
17. This issue demands a separate study. In my book on the Golem I did not pay due
attention to it.
18. Genesis 12:5 occurs in several instances in the context of creating a Golem, especially
in R. Eleazar of Worms's Commentary on Sejer Yetzirah. See Idel, Golem, p. 56.
19. Abraham Abulafia, Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1582, fols. 5a-b, in
the edition of Amnon Gross (Jerusalem, 1999), pp. 50-51.
20. See the translation of Eleazar of Worms's recipe in Idel, Golem, p. 56. See chap. 7, sec.
1, where Abulafia lists Eleazar's commentary on Sejer Yetzirah among those he studied
in Barcelona in 1270-71.
21. Abraham Abulafia, Sejer Sitrei Torah, Ms. Paris, BN 774, fol. 155b. See also Idel, Golem,
p. 98.
22. See also Idel, The Mystical Experience, p. 211 n. 36.
23. See Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390, fols. 94b~95a. See translation and analysis in Idel,
Golem, pp. 97-98.
24. Abulafia, Sejer ha-'Ot, p. 81.
25. On this issue see Idel, Ben, pp. 277-376.
26. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 195-203.
27. Abulafia, Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1582, fols. 8oa-b.
28. See Ms. Paris, BN 763, fols. 3ia-b; Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390, fols. 94b-95a; Ms. Parma,
Perreau 92/8, fol. 117b; Ms. Hamburg, Levi 151, fol. 23b; Ms. Vatican 528, fol. 71b;
Ms. Munich 341, fol. 183b; Ms. Cambridge, Add. 647, fol. 18b; Ms. Barllan 286, fol. 82a.
29. Sejer Ner 'Elohim, Ms. Munich 10, fols. I72b-i73a. See Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 188.
Scholem considers Abulafia to be the author of this anonymous treatise, although no
evidence for this assumption is to be found in the unique manuscript; see Idel,
"Abraham Abulafia," pp. 72-74.
30. Cf. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 188.
31. For the formula "divine man" see Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 146 n. 35 and 151
n. 63.
32. Amos Goldreich, ed., "R. Isaac of Acre's Me'irat 'Einayyim" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew
University, Jerusalem, 1984), p. 223 (Hebrew).
33. See Harar, Sha'arei Tzedeq, p. in.
34. Sejer ha-Bahir, ed. R. Margolioth (Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1978), p. 62.
•422-
Notes to Pages 247-252
35. For another instance in which a theme strongly close to the mental Golem was
discussed by a group of Kabbalists, perhaps related to R. Yitzhaq of Acre, see Idel,
Golem, pp. 112-113.
36. This is how R. Yitzhaq referred to himself even when he was old, deliberately pointing
to his modesty. See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 87-88 n. 43.
37. Instead of R. Ze'ira in the famous passage in BT, Sanhedrin, fol. 65b, dealing with the
creation of the artificial man.
38. Unfortunately, I have not found such a discussion in the extant manuscripts of 'Otzar
Hayyim.
39. Yod is the first letter of Yetzirah, namely formation.
40. Bet is the first letter of Beriy'ah, creation.
41. On the kabbalistic source that was used by R. Yitzhaq see sec. g.
42. R. Yitzhaq of Acre, Ms. Sassoon 919, p. 217; Ms. Cambridge, Genizah Taylor-Schechter
K 12.4, p. 22. For more on this passage see Idel, Golem, pp. 108-111.
43. See Gershom Scholem, "Hitpatehut Torat ha-'Olamot be-Qabbalat ha-Rishonim," Tarbitz 2
(1931), pp. 415-442; ibid., 3 (1932), pp. 33-66 (Hebrew); Idel, Studies in Ecstatic
Kabbalah, p. 88 n. 47.
44. Goldreich, "R. Isaac of Acre's Me'irat 'Einayyim," p. 20.
45. See Idel, "Maimonides and Kabbalah," p. 71.
46. R. Yitzhaq of Acre, 'Otzar Hayyim, Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 775, fol. 22a.
47. See idem, 'Otzar Hayyim, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1911, fol. 150b.
48. The numerical value of the consonants of these two nouns amounts in gematria to
Ma'aseh Merkavah. See Idel, Lancjuacje, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 151-153.
49. R Yitzhaq of Acre, 'Otzar Hayyim, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1911, fol. 150b.
50. See the text of R. Yitzhaq of Acre, 'Otzar Hayyim, Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 775,
fol. 129a, translated and analyzed in Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 449-460.
51. Cf. Psalms 89:3. Hesed is numerically equivalent to 72, a clear hint at the divine name
of seventy-two letters.
52. On man as the most compounded of all the beings in Abulafia and his sources, see
Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, p. 9.
53. R Reuven Tzarfati, Commentary on Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut, Ms. Cambridge, Add. 505.7,
fol. 25b.
54. See Idel, Golem, pp. 104-105.
55. See Alemanno's untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fols. 6ga-joa.
56. Alemanno was deeply influenced by Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl's Hayy bin Yoqtan, as interpreted
by a mid-fourteenth-century Provencal Jewish commentator, R. Moshe Narboni, whose
commentary he possessed. There the human being learns all the sciences by himself. This
topic warrants a separate study; meanwhile see Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 307 n. 36
and 313 nn. 78-79. On this work see Maurice R Hayoun, "Le commentaire de Moise de
Narbonne (1300-1362) sur le Hayy ibn Yaqzdn d'Ibn Tufayl," Archiues d'histoire doctrinale et
litteraire du Moyen Age 55 (1988), pp. 23-98. Alemanno respected Ibn Tufayl so deeply that
•423-
Notes to Pages 252-253
he compared the relationship between him and all the other sages to the relationship
between Moses and all the other prophets. See Idel, "The Study Program," p. 313 n. 79.
57. Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fol. 79a.
58. This term comes from the Hebrew translation of Ibn Tufayl's Hauy bin Yoqtan, Ms.
Oxford, Bodleiana 1337, fol. 102b. See also Maurice R. Hayoun, La ph.ilosoph.ie et la the'ol-
ocjie de Moise de Narbonne (Mohr/Siebeck, Tubingen 1989), pp. 210-214; an d, in this
volume, Concluding Remarks and app. 4, note 13.
59. Compare the text from Hesheq Shlomo, quoted later in this chapter, which regards the
wisdom of creating an artificial anthropoid as a prophetic lore. Compare also the text
ofR. Abraham Bibago, quoted in Idel, Golem, pp. 165-167. It is possible that Alemanno
was acquainted with his work, although it is also probable that they were influenced by
common sources, such as R. Moses Narboni's commentary on Ibn Tufayl's Hayy bin
Yoqtan. See chap. 16, sec. 2, in this volume. For the searches for prophecy in Alemanno's
Christian entourage see Stephane Toussaint, "L'individuo estatico: Tecniche profe-
tiche in Marsilio Ficino e Giovanni Pico della Mirandola," Bruniana & Campanelliana:
Ricerche jilosojice e materiali storico-testuali 6:2 (2000), pp. 352-353, quoting an early-
sixteenth-century testimony of Girolamo Benivieni concerning Giovanni Pico and
Ficino as striving for prophetic and magical experience. For other associations of Pico
with prophecy see Toussaint, ibid., pp. 356-357; and also Bacchelli, Giovanni Pico e Pier
Leone da Spoleto, pp. 74-75. See also Toussaint's article "Prophetare alia fine del
Quattrocento," in Studi Sauonaroliani verso il V centenario, ed. G. C. Garfagnini (Edizioni
del Galluzzo, Florence, 1996), pp. 167-181; and Lelli, La lettera preziosa, pp. 18-19 n - 33-
For another similarity between ecstatic Kabbalah and Ficino see Idel, Language, Torah,
and Hermeneutics, pp. 54-55. See also Concluding Remarks, sec. 1, in this volume.
60. Harkauat 'otam ha-shorashi[m]. For the understanding of the account of the chariot, which
is in my opinion dealt with here, and the coalescence of the letters, see already Abraham
Abulafia's view, discussed in Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 50-52; and the
view of R. Yehudah ha-Levi, discussed in Idel, Golem, p. 87. Yehudah ha-Levi, though
comparing the movement of the spheres with the combinations of letters and the prepa-
ration of the matter to receive form from God, does not explicitly mention the creation of
an anthropoid. For the use of the term shorashim see also app. 3, note 39, in this volume.
61. On this term see Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 38-41.
62. This mistaken attribution differs from the talmudic discussion but may have an earlier
source, since it occurs also in other authors. See Idel, Golem, p. 188 n. 18.
63. Namely Bezalel. Cf. BT, Berakhot, fol. 55a.
64. R. Yohanan Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 17a, in the margin
beside a quotation from Abraham Abulafia's commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed,
titled Sitrei Torah.
65. Compare the discussion earlier, in sec. 5, of R. Yitzhaq of Acre's understanding of
creation of the Golem as connected to the highest realm in the universe. Although it is
unlikely that Alemanno was acquainted with the earlier Kabbalist's text, the possibility
cannot be entirely excluded.
•424-
Notes to Pages 253-255
66. See Idel, Golem, pp. 106-108. On devequt as conjunction as a relatively advanced ideal
see app. 3 of this volume.
67. See Stephane Toussaint, "Ficino's Orphic Magic or Jewish Astrology and Oriental
Philosophy?: A Note on Spiritus, the Three Books on Life, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zarza,"
Accademia 2 (2000), pp. 19-21.
68. See also Toussaint, "L'individuo estatico," pp. 351-379.
69. See Klaus Herrmann, "Golemtraditionen bei Johanan Alemanno," in An der Schiuelle zur
Moderne: Juden in der Renaissance, ed. Giuseppe Veltri and Annette Winkelmann (Brill,
Leiden, 2003), pp. 129-154, especially pp. 153-154 for the Hebrew texts. However,
there is nothing new in Alemanno's citation, since he simply relies on a fuller version
of R. Eleazar of Worms, unlike the deficient version in the printed Commentary on Sejer
Yetzirah and in some manuscripts.
70. Qarqa' betulah occurs also in R. Eleazar's original recipe. In the version by Lazzarelli, to
be discussed later in the chapter, the word is Adama, "earth." On the mountain and
virgin soil see also Pseudo-Sa'adyah, Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, Ms. Munich 40,
fol. 56a. I assume that the two recipes are independent of each other but reflect an
earlier common source, similar to what we find in Shimushei Tehilim, on Psalm 10,
where the dust is taken from virgin earth that has not been plowed, and upon it names
are written; but this magical rite is performed for another purpose.
71. In Alemanno ua-yigalgel, "turned over"; in R. Eleazar's version it is va-ygbal, "he
kneaded, " which is better. For the occurrence of the root GBL in earlier sources dealing
with the creation of Adam see Idel, Golem, pp. 34-35.
72. For this type of combination, found also in R Eleazar of Worms's Sefer ha-Shem, see
Idel, The Mystical Experience, p. 23; and idem, Golem, pp. 57-58.
73. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 95b. This version is quite
similar to what is found in the earliest extant manuscript of R. Eleazar of Worms,
copied in 1344, in Ms. Jerusalem, Fischel, fol. 18a.
74. Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 95b. See the Hebrew translation by Qalonymos ben
Qalonymos, done at the beginning of the fourteenth century in Italy, found in Ms.
Paris, BN 1055, fol. 54b. For an earlier quotation of this passage by R. Jacob ben
Solomon, a fourteenth-century Provengal author acquainted with Kabbalah, see Dov
Schwartz, Studies on Astral Magic in Medieual Jewish Thought, trans. D. Loubish and
B. Stein (Brill, Leiden, 2005), p. 235. On the book Sefer ha-Peri and its commentary in
Hebrew translation see ibid., pp. 235-236, 249-250 n. 75. Alemanno uses the two
books several times in his works.
75. tzelamim. Thus it seems that Alemanno does not doubt the efficacy of idolatrous
astromagic.
76. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 95b.
77. The phrase "world of the letters" is characteristic of Alemanno's thought, and it
stands for a world lower than that of the sefirot and higher than that of the angels. See
Moshe Idel, "The Epistle of Rabbi Yitzhaq of Pisa(?) in Its Three Versions," Qouetz Al
Yad, n.s. 10 (1982)^. 177 n. 89 (Hebrew). It reflects the influence of R. Jacob ben Jacob
•425-
Notes to Pages 255-257
ha-Kohen, Abraham Abulafia, and Reuven Tzarfati. See also chap. 11 in this volume.
This reification of language is part of the structure of thought that seeks to attribute
magical powers to language, and is part of Alemanno's elevation of magic over mental
contemplation.
78. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 95b.
79. See Sefer ha-Hayyim, Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390, fols. n8a-i37a; and Idel, Golem, pp. 86-91.
80. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 22b.
81. Ibid. For the context of this view and its possible influence on Bruno see Idel, "The
Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 203-204; and chap. 14 of this volume.
82. Cf. Exodus 31:3, 35:31. The term melakh'ah occurs in the context of the creation of the
Golem in R. Eleazar's Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, Ms. lerusalem, Fischel, fols. I7b-i8a.
The sequence of operations in the Bible fits with the emphasis on action rather than
mental operations.
83. BT, Beraldiot, fol. 55 b.
84. The relationship between combinations of letters and prophecy is characteristic of the
prophetic, namely ecstatic, Kabbalah of R. Abraham Abulafia, whose influence on the
views of Alemanno was significant. See also Concluding Remarks, sec. 1.
85. The spiritual forces are part of the forces manipulated by the intellectual medieval
magic of both Arabs and Jews; see Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations,"
pp. 201-202.
86. It seems that Alemanno approximates here an understanding of the letters as
elements, or stoicheia, similar to that in Sefer Yetzirah.
87. This conflation of the creative acts in just one person conflicts with the talmudic story.
88. This view, too, seems to be influenced by Abraham Abulafia's view of Sefer Yetzirah,
understood on its exoteric level as dealing with the creation of the world; see Idel,
Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 52.
89. BT, Hacjigah, fol. nb. The mention of the necessity to study the account of creation by
two persons may have something to do with the fact that Sefer Yetzirah was supposed to
be studied by two persons, not by one alone. See Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 178.
However, in R. Eleazar of Worms's Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, Ms. Jerusalem, Fischel,
fol. 17b, it is clear that his requirement of a minimum of two persons for studying Sefer
Yetzirah is dependent upon the late midrash and is not, as claimed by Peter Schaefer
(following Scholem though not mentioning him), a reversal of the discussion in BT,
Hagigah. See Schaefer, "The Magic of the Golem: The Early Development of the Golem
Legend," Journal ojfjeurish Studies 46:1-2 (1995), p. 260.
90. R. Yohanan Alemanno, Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 140, fol. 251b.
91. In another important discussion, in his untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fol. 25a,
Alemanno presents the possibility that a full-fledged human being may emerge in a
natural way in certain atmospheric conditions, by means of generatio equiuoca. See
Idel, Golem, pp. 173-175 and the bibliography there. See also Sami S. Hawi, Islamic
Naturalism and Mysticism: A Philosophical Study of Ibn Tufayl's Hayy bin Yaqzan (Brill,
Leiden, 1974).
•426-
Notes to Pages 258-260
92. See Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fols. 77a, 124b.
93. On Lazzarelli and Judaism see Claudio Moreschini, Storia dell'ermetismo cristiano
(Morcelliana, Brescia, 2000), pp. 234-236; and idem, "LapoesiacristianadiLudovico
Lazzarelli," Accademia 5 (2003), pp. 56-57.
94. Hanegraaff-Bouthoorn, Lodouico Lazzarelli, pp. 256-258. The Latin text of Crater
Hermetiswas printed by M. BriniinE.Garin,M. Brini, C. Vasoli, and P. Zambelli, eds.,
Testi umanistici su I'ermetismo (Archivio di Filosofia, Rome, 1955), p. 68. See also
the detailed analysis of this passage in Hanegraaff-Bouthoorn, Lodouico Lazzarelli,
pp. 84-96.
95. Gershom Scholem, "The Image of the Golem," in Scholem, Elements of the Kabbalah
and Its Symbolism, trans. Joseph ben Shlomo (Mossad Bialik, Jerusalem, 1976),
pp. 405-406 n. 62 (Hebrew).
96. The redness of the earth may have something to do with the possible conflation of
the vocalization of the consonants of 'Adama, as if related to 'Odem, "red."
97. See Garin etal., Testi umanistici su I'ermetismo, p. 68.
98. Cf. Daniel P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic- From Ficino to Campanella (Warburg
Institute, London, 1958), p. 68. See also Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 202-203; an d
idem, "Hermeticism and Judaism."
99. Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 95a.
100. See, e.g., the texts in Idel, "Hermeticism and Judaism," p. 65; and Schwartz, Astral
Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought, pp. 17, 247, 281-282 n. 73. For the concept of
marrying heaven and earth as part of magic in late Quattrocento Florentine sources
see Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 325-327.
101. Idel, "Hermeticism and Judaism," p. 65; and Dov Schwartz, The Philosophy of a
Fourteenth-Century Jewish Neoplatonic Circle (Ben Tzvi Institute and Bialik Institute,
Jerusalem, 1996), pp. 194, 266 (Hebrew). On the importance of Ibn Zarza's Meqor
Hayyim for the astromagical theories of Alemanno see also chap. 21 and app. 4 in this
volume. The book in which Enoch is mentioned differs, naturally, from the other
books attributed to Enoch, including what is called the Hebrew Enoch. However,
Bacchelli, Giouanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto, p. 85, suggests that Lazzarelli was per-
haps referring to a Hebrew book of Enoch. The assumption that conjunction between
man and God is possible by means of sacrifices is found explicitly in Alemanno's
Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1535, fol. 97b, although he assumes that this is
a lower path cultivated by the forefathers, in contrast to the higher way proposed
later by Moses and then Solomon, which operates by means of desire, a Platonic
theory adopted by Alemanno from Ibn Falaquera's books.
102. R. Yitzhaq of Acre, Collectanea, Ms. New York, JTS 1777, fol. 33b. On the fuller
context of this quotation see Moshe Idel, "Enoch — The Mystical Cobbler," Kabbalah
5 (2000), pp. 268-270 (Hebrew); and the updated version in Idel, The Angelic World,
pp. 105-134.
103. See Asclepius 23-24, quoted also in Lazzarelli's Crater Hermetis, 27.1, in Hanegraaff-
Bouthoorn, Ludouico Lazzarelli, pp. 248-255.
•427-
Notes to Pages 260-263
104. Wouter Hanegraaff, "Sympathy or the Devil: Renaissance Magic and the Ambivalence
of Idols," Esoterica 2 (2000), pp. 1-43, 84-96, and especially pp. 45-46 n. 143; Idel,
The Mystical Experience, pp. 202-203; an d idem, "Hermeticism and Judaism."
105. See Idel, Hasidism, pp. 155-156.
106. Ibid., pp. 156-159.
107. See Idel, The Mystical Experience, p. 56.
108. E.g., Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390, fols. 92b~93a.
109. I printed this early manuscript version in the Hebrew version of my book Golem,
pp. 271-275, together with some variants from other early manuscripts. More recently
I analyzed its structure and meaning in idem, "Golems and God," pp. 235-243.
no. See Idel, "Golems and God," pp. 248-252.
in. The first statement of the book deals with the thirty-two paths of knowledge by
which the worlds have been created. The comparison of the numerical value of LB to
the structure of the Pentateuch aims at establishing some form of association
between the two major accounts of creation.
112. These are the first and the last letters of the Pentateuch, which means that LB —
heart — encompasses the entire Torah.
113. 'Erkkah, literally, value or price.
114. Compare Midrash Tehillim, ed. S. Buber (Vilnius, 1891), p. 33, discussed by Scholem,
On the Kabbalah, p. 37; and by Yehuda Liebes, Ars Poetica in Sefer Yetzirah (Schocken,
Tel Aviv, 2000) (Hebrew), p. 4.
115. This is an invention of the anonymous Kabbalist.
116. For the relationship between these two figures in the Middle Ages see Eli Yassif, The
Tales of Ben Sira in the Middle Acjes (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 17, 32-36
(Hebrew).
117. Anon., Commentary on the Secret ojthe Tetracjrammaton, Ms. New York, JTS 1887, fol. 7b.
See Scholem, On the Kabbalah, pp. 180-181. The text was paraphrased in the widely
available kabbalistic book Sejer ha-Peliy'ah, pt. I, fols. 5ia-d. On this book see chap.
22 in this volume. For a use of this passage see also R Jacob Israel Finzi's decision
against printing the Zohar, printed by Simhah Assaf in Sinai 5 (1939-40), pp. 60-62
(Hebrew). On the story of Jeremiah see, e.g.,BT, AuodahZarah, fol. 17a, etc.; and Idel,
Golem, p. 98 and n. 10.
118. Bacchelli, Giovanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto, p. 15 n. 50.
119. For a late-fifteenth-century Latin translation of this Hebrew text, which could have
had an impact on some Christian authors in Italy, see ibid., pp. 15, 19-21, 31.
120. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, pp. 180-181. See also Idel, Golem, pp. 177-179.
121. On this issue see my introduction to Reuchlin's On the Art ojthe Kabbalah, pp. xvi-xix.
122. This is exactly the deficiency of the anthropoid according to the talmudic story in BT,
Sanhedrin, fol. 65b.
123. On the association between speech and thought see also an early Ashkenazi text
belonging to R. Yehudah he-Hasid, discussed in Idel, Golem, p. 55. 1 assume that this
is an earlier tradition found in Samaritan literature, as I shall try to show elsewhere.
•428-
Notes to Pages 263-266
124. On China as a place of magic see another text preserved by Ibn Zarza and discussed
in app. 4. On taking dust from the mountain see above the recipe of R. Eleazar as
quoted by both Alemanno and Lazzarelli. The parallel is quite astonishing, and
shows that there might have been a common source. In any case this thematic affin-
ity demonstrates that R. Eleazar of Worms did not invent his recipe. See also note 135
below.
125. The Hebrew text and the English translation according to Raphael Jospe and
Dov Schwartz, "Shem Tov Falaquera's Lost Bible Commentary," Hebreu) Union
College Annual 64 (1933), pp. 199-200. On the creation of life in this book see
Pinella Travaglia, "Asclepio e la produzione artificiale della vita nella Agricoltura
NabaUa," in Hermeticismjrom Late Antiquity to Humanism, ed. P. Lucentini, I. Parri, and
V. P. Compagni (Turnhout, Brespols, 2004), pp. 315-338, who does not deal with the
passage translated here. See also Steven M. Wasserstrom, "The Challenge of Artificial
Life: Medieval lewish Responses from the Muslim World," CCAR Journal: A Reform
Jewish Quarterly, Fall 2000, pp. 69-80.
126. On this thinker, whose writings were well known to Yohanan Alemanno, see Raphael
Jospe, Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera (Hebrew Union
College Press, Cincinnati, 1988).
127. See L' agriculture Nabate'ene, traduction en Arabe attribue' a Abu Bakr Ahmad b. 'All al-Kasdani,
connu sous !e nom d'Ibn Wahshiyya, ed. Toufic Fahd, vol. 2 (Damascus, 1995), pp. 1318-1325.
Thanks to Professor Sarah Stroumsa for her help in finding the quotation.
128. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1963), pp. 515, 518, 522, 542, 547, 548, 549, 559.
129. See Pseudo-Ibn Ezra, Sefer ha-Atzamim, ed. Menasse Grossberg (London, 1901),
p. 21. See also app. 3.
130. See Idel, "Golems and God," pp. 228-231.
131. Idel, Golem, pp. 4-5.
132. On this issue see Idel, Golem (Hebrew version), pp. 271-275.
133. Ibid., p. 273.
134. See chap. 7 for a description of Ms. Parma, de Rossi 1390.
135. Compare the suggestion made by Peter Schaefer to connect the beginning of the
Golem legend with the claim of the Hasidei Ashkenaz for purity; see his "The Magic
of the Golem," pp. 259-261. Schaefer, who mentions R. Yehudah Barceloni,
nevertheless ignores the fuller version of the late midrash as preserving material that
predates the Hasidei Ashkenaz, a fact that problematizes his theory. See also the
mid-eleventh-century discussions already alluded to in Idel, Golem, p. 40 n. 18, but
ignored by Schaefer. I shall elaborate in a separate study upon the details of the
contribution of these early sources for a better understanding of the Golem ideas.
136. See the text from the Qumran literature Pesher Habaquq 8:9. Cf. F. G. Martinez and
E. J. C. Tigchelaar, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, vol. 1 (Brill, Leiden, 1998),
p. 16. Although my reading of the Hebrew phrase Niqra' 'al shem ha-'Emmet as "who
was called in the name of Truth" is not attested in the translations or commentaries
•429-
Notes to Pages 266-268
I am acquainted with, I hope to be able to elaborate on this proposal elsewhere. I
assume that the translation of the phrase shem ha-'Emmet as "the name of Truth" is
erroneous. This is also the case in the later Arabic, where the term Haq means both
God and truth, as is the case in Samaritan thought. See Jarl Possum, The Name of God
and the Angel of the Lord (J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 1985), pp. 156-157 n. 231. See also
BT, Sabbath, fol. 55a; Genesis Rabba 8:5, p. 60; Fossum, The Name of God, pp. 245-253;
Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, p. 229 n. 7; idem, Ars Poetica in Sefer Yetzirah, p. 185; Idel,
Golem, pp. 4-5, 306-313; and Idel, Ben, pp. 29-30.
137. See Scholem, On the Kabbalah, pp. 180-181. See also the views of two scholars who
follow Scholem's interpretation: Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination: Tomard a
Postmodern Culture (Routledge, London, 1994), p. 59; Eric Voegelin, Israel and
Reuelation (Louisiana University Press, Baten Rouge, 1956), p. 465; and idem,
"Science, Politics and Gnosticism," in Science, Politics and Gnosticism: Two Essays, trans.
William J. Fitzpatrick (Gateway Edition, Chicago, 1968), pp. 53-73. See especially
ibid., pp. 56-60, 64-65.
138. See also chap. 16, sec. 2, on Al-Bataliyusi's Book of the Imaginary Circles.
139. See Irene J. Winter, " 'Idols of the King': Royal Images as Recipient of Ritual Action
in Ancient Mesopotamia," Journal of Ritual Studies 6:1 (1992), pp. 13-42.
140. Ibid., p. 13.
141. Another method of animating a lifeless structure is to put a divine name in the mouth
of an anthropoid or of a dead person. This is evident already in magical texts, in the
midrash, in Megillat Ahima'atz ben Paltiel, and in a more astral manner in the various
layers of the Zohar. See Daniel Sperber, "Some Rabbinic Themes in Magical Recipes,"
Journal Jor the Study ofjudaism 16 (1985), pp. 95-99.
142. For more on the importance in rabbinic literature of the divine image as the shape
found in man see Lorberbaum, Image oJGod.
143. See chap. 16, sec. 2. In addition to the vast Arabic philosophical literature available in
Latin in the Middle Ages, Abu Yusuf ibn Yishak al-Kindi's famous book in its Latin
translation, De Radiis, had a direct influence. See the bibliography collected in
Al-Kindi, De radiis, trans. Didier Ottaviani (Editions Allia, Paris, 2003); and Pinella
Travaglia, Magic, Causality and Intentionality: The Doctrine of Rays in Al-Kindi (Micrologus's
Library) (Edizioni del Galluzzo, Florence, 1999). I assume that Alemanno knew this
book also. The role attributed to utterances was central in the magical worldview of
Al-Kindi. See Couliano, Eros and Magic, pp. 118-123, 126-128. Even Sufi material was
present in the Hebrew material available in Florence. So, for example, in one of
Moshe Narboni's books there are quotations from the important mystic Al-Hallaj, as
Georges Vajda pointed out in his "Comment le philosophe juif Moise de Narbonne
comprenait-il les paroles ecstatiques des soufies?," in Actas del primer congreso de estu-
dios arabes islamicos (Madrid, 1964), pp. 129-135; while Abuhamed al-Ghazzali's views
were known from a Hebrew version of one of his books, titled Me'oznei Tzedeq, which
Alemanno quoted often. For the impact of Al-Bataliyusi via Alemanno on Giovanni
Pico, see Idel, Ascensions on High, pp. 167-203.
•430-
Notes to Pages 270-271
Chapter 21: Astro magical Pneumatic Anthropoids from
Medieval Spain to Renaissance Italy
1. See Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, ed. and trans. M. Greenberg (University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, i960); J. L. McKenzie, "God and Nature in the Old
Testament," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 14 (1952) pp. 18-39, I2 4 _I 45-
2. See Michael E. Stone, "Lists of Revealed Things in the Apocalyptic Literature," in
Magnolia Dei, or the Mighty Acts o/God: Essays on the Bible and Archeology in the Memory oJG.
Ernst Wright, ed. Frank M. Cross, Werner E. Lemke, and Patrick D. Miller (Doubleday,
Garden City, N.Y., 1976), pp. 426-428; idem, "The Parabolic Use of Natural Order in
Judaism of the Second Temple Age," in Gilgul: Essays on Transjormation, Revolution, and
Permanence in the History ojfReligions Presented to R. J. Zivi Werbloivsky, ed. S. Shaked, D.
Shulman, and G. G. Stroumsa (Brill, Leiden, 1987), pp. 298-308.
3. See Haym Soloveitchik, "Three Themes in the Sefer Hasidim," Association Jbr Jeivish Studies
Revieiv 1 (1976), pp. 311-325.
4. It is obvious that magical elements were important in the Heikhalot literature, mostly
an elitist mystical-magical kind of literature, more so than was previously recognized
in modern scholarship; see, e.g., Peter Schaefer, "Gershom Scholem Reconsidered:
The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism," in his Helchalot-Studien (Mohr/
Siebeck, Tubingen, 1988), pp. 277-295; idem, "Jewish Magic Literature in Late
Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages," Journal of Jewish Studies 41:1 (1990) pp. 75-91;
Michael Swartz, Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jeivish Mysticism
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996). In more general terms on the status of
magic in Judaism see Moshe Idel, "On Judaism, Jewish Mysticism, and Magic," in
Envisioning Magic, ed. Peter Schaefer and Hans G. Kippenberg (Brill, Leiden, 1997),
pp. 195-214.
5. On Ibn Ezra's astrology see Y. Tzvi Langermann, "Some Astrological Themes in the
Thought of Abraham ibn Ezra," in Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra: Studies in the Writings of a
Tiveljth-Century Jeivish Polymath, ed. I. Twersky and J. M. Harris (Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993), pp. 28-85; Shlomo Sela, Astrology and Biblical Exegesis
in Abraham ibn Ezra's Thought (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 1999) (Hebrew); Ron
Barkai, Science, Magic, and Mythology in the Middle Ages (Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem,
1987), pp. 7-35 (Hebrew); Abraham ibn Ezra, Le livre desjondements astrologiques, ed.
and trans. Jacques Halbronn (Retz, Paris, 1977); the numerous studies of Dov
Schwartz, especially Studies on Astral Magic in Medieval Jeivish Thought, trans. D. Loubish
and B. Stein (Brill, Leiden, 2005); idem, "The Religious Philosophy of Samuel ibn
Zarza" (Ph.D. diss., Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 1989) (Hebrew): idem, The
Philosophy of a Fourteenth-Century Jeivish Neoplatonic Circle (Ben Tzvi Institute and Bialik
Institute, Jerusalem, 1996) (Hebrew); idem, "Different Forms of Magic in Jewish
Thought in Fourteenth-Century Spain," Proceedings o/the American Academy Jor Jewish
Research 57 (1990-91), pp. 17-47 (Hebrew).
6. See Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonical Interpretations," pp. 204-210.
•431-
Notes to Pages 271-272
7. See Idel, "Hermeticism and Judaism," pp. 63-64, 65-66.
8. On Ficino's astromagic see Couliano, Eros and Mcigic, pp. 137-143. The influence of
Hermetic magic on Renaissance magic has been accepted by scholars since the works
of Daniel P. Walker and Frances A. Yates. More recently the importance of Neoplatonic
magic in Ficino's thought has been highlighted by Brian Copenhaver, "Hermes
Trismegistus, Proclus, and the Question ofa Philosophy ofMagic in the Renaissance,"
in Hermeticism and the Renaissance, ed. I. Merkel and Allen G. Debus (Folger Books,
Washington, D.C., 1988), pp. 79-110. The deep influence of Picatrix, a work closely
related to Hermetic magic, on Renaissance thinkers is accepted by modern scholars.
9. Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 192-195, 204-211.
10. See idem, "Jewish Magic from the Renaissance," pp. 82-117; idem, Hasidism.
11. Idem, "Hermeticism and Judaism, " pp. 67-70. Stephane Toussaint has demonstrated
this assumption in a definitive way in his important study "Ficino's Orphic Magic or
Jewish Astrology and Oriental Philosophy?: A Note on Spiritus, the Three Books on
Life, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zarza," Accademia 2 (2000), pp. 29-31.
12. See chap. 16, sec. 4.
13. See Jose Sangrador Gil, La escuela de traductores de Toledo y sus colaboratoresjudios (Instituto
Provincial de Investigaciones y Estudios Toledanos, Toledo, 1985).
14. Syntheses between some Jewish mystical concepts and Arabic magic are already evi-
dent in the Arabic writings of R. Yehudah ben Nissim ibn Malka, who flourished in the
mid-thirteenth century, apparently in North Africa, long before the rearrival of Arabic
magic in some Jewish elite circles in Spain in the fourteenth century. See Moshe Idel,
"The Beginning of Kabbala in North Africa?: A Forgotten Document by R Yehuda ben
Nissim ibn Malka," Pe'amim 43 (1990), pp. 4-15 (Hebrew); and Georges Vajda, Juda
ben Nissim ibn Malka, philosopheJuiveMarocain (Collection Hesperis, Paris, 1954). On the
different attitudes to astral magic in the Zohar see Dorit Cohen-Aloro, "Magic and
Sorcery in the Zohar" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1989) (Hebrew).
15. Moritz Steinschneider, ZurPseudepujraphische Literatur (Berlin, 1862), pp. 26-27. Despite
his learned description of Ms. Munich, Hebr. 214, Steinschneider did not distinguish
between the epistle on alchemy, which constitutes the greatest part of the described
text, and the epistle on astrology, contained in the Munich manuscript, fols. 33a-b,
which is an entirely different document. Ms. Ghirondi28 (now Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana
2779), which contains Maimonides' spurious epistle on alchemy, found also in
Ms. Munich, Hebr. 214, does not contain the epistle on astrology. See also Raphael
Patai, The Jewish Alchemists (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994), pp. 300-313.
16. See Gershom Scholem, "Mi-Hoqer li-Mequbbal," Tarbitz 5 (1935), p. 95 (Hebrew). A
spurious epistle dealing with astrological magic and attributed to Maimonides has
nothing to do with the present text. Scholem correctly pointed out the affinity between
that episde and Abraham Abulafia's ecstatic Kabbalah. See also above, chap. 12, sec.
2. Maimonides himself rejected astrology and magic; see Tzvi Langermann,
"Maimonides' Repudiation of Astrology," Maimonidean Studies 2 (1992), pp. 123-158.
Cf. app. 4 in this volume.
•432-
Notes to Pages 272-273
17. See Hartwig Hirschfeld, Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew Mss. of the Montefiore Library
(MacMillan, London, 1904), p. 128.
18. Moritz Steinschneider, Die Hebrdische Handschriften . . . in Miinchen (Catalogus Codicum
Manuscriptorum Bibliothesae Regiae Monacensis, Munich, 1895), p. 95.
19. In Ms. London, Montefiore 431, the name of the author of the original letter was
erased and is no longer legible.
20. The following text has not been found in any of Claudius Ptolemaeus's extant writings.
21. This is the version in Ms. London, Montefiore 431. The meaning of the phrase "star of
the Sun," namely the planet of the Sun, in Hebrew astrological terminology is Mercury.
Although the term "Sun" appears alone in the two other manuscripts, on the basis of
the passage in Ibn Billya quoted later in this chapter, apparently from an Arabic ver-
sion of the text, which reads 'Utarid, namely Sun, I have preferred the version in the
London ms.
22. In Ms. Budapest, Kaufmann 246, the version is Auir, namely Air. In Ms. Munich,
Hebr. 214, we find 'Or, namely light, apparently a distortion of Auir. However, as we
know from medieval astrology, Aquarius belongs to the element of water. Thus it
seems that at least in this case the version of Ms. London, Montefiore 431, is superior
to that of the Budapest ms.
23. The term tzurah has more than one meaning in this epistle: whereas it stands here for
"form," shortly afterward it also stands for "constellation." For the various astromag-
ical meanings of this term see also Schwartz, Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought.
24. Namely Aquarius, portrayed as the drawer of water.
25. Ms. Budapest, Kaufmann 246, has 'Ofel, namely the dark house. Ms. Munich, Hebr.
214, has Shafel, namely low. I prefer the version of Ms. London, Montefiore 431, Nqfel,
"descendant," which complements the term "ascendant" designating the zodiacal
sign Gemini.
26. This is the version in Ms. Munich, Hebr. 214. The version in the two other manu-
scripts seems to be erroneous: instead of u-Levanah we find ue-lifheihem, "in front of."
27. Hokhmat ha-tekhunah normally means astronomy; however, in this context it is not
evident whether the author is referring to astronomy or to astrology.
28. The recurrence of the term previously used for the anthropoid form, in order to desig-
nate the configuration of the planets and "stars," seems to strengthen the parallelism
between the form below and the constellation above. The affinity between the two
realms involves not only the attraction of the supernal influx by the lower form, but
also a structural similarity between these realms. See also another text found in Ibn
Zarza, discussed in app. 4.
29. This term occurs already in R. Shelomo Itzhaqi's famous Commentary on the Bible, on
Genesis 1:26-27, m connection with the creation of man in accordance with the defus,
the Hebrew form of the Greek typos, apparently the mold prepared for him.
30. The idea of the need for a handsome form seems to be related to the concept that the
soul looks for a beautiful body. See Paul Kraus, "Jabir ibn Hayyan et la science greque, "
Me'moires presente's d 1'Institut d'Egypte 45 (1942), pt. II, p. 124 and n. 5.
•433-
Notes to Pages 273-275
31. In Hebrew keli can also mean an instrument. For the use of the term keli in relation to
the creation of an anthropoid see Idel, Golem, pp. 174, 195 n. 104. However, even if the
term is to be translated as "vessel," it is obviously not the vessel wherein the anthro-
poid is created but the instrument for pouring the metal. Thus it has nothing to do
with the theory of the creation of the homunculus in Paracelsus's practice.
32. Sha'ah in the Munich and Budapest mss.
33. Ruhaniyyut is the Hebrew translation of the Arabic ruhaniyat. For a history of this
concept, which was crucial in medieval Arabic and Jewish magic, see Pines, "On the
Term Ruhaniyyut"; and Idel, Hasidism.
34. See the relationship between the revelation of secrets and prophecy and the ruhaniyat
of a person in Ghayyat al-Haldm, namely Picatrix, as analyzed by Pines, "On the Term
Ruhaniyyut," p. 520.
35. On the meaning of the term hitbodedut as mental concentration see Idel, Studies
in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 103-169; idem, "Hitbodedut as Concentration in Jewish
Philosophy," in Shlomo Pines Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, ed.
Moshe Idel, Zeev W. Harvey, and E. Schweid, 2 vols. (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1988),
i: 39-59 (Hebrew).
36. In other parts of the epistle I have translated this term as "wisdom," but here it seems
to stand for thinking about a certain science or about issues related to discursive
knowledge that cannot be decided by a rationalist process, and the thinker needs a
special nonrationalist avenue. Compare the story on Avicenna adduced in Idel, Studies
in Ecstatic Kabbalah, p. 112. For more on this theory see Amirah 'Eiran, "The View of
Hads in R. Yehudah ha-Levi and Maimonides," Tura' 4 (1996), pp. 117-146 (Hebrew).
37. This is one of the qualities of Saturn; see Idel, "Hitbodedut as Concentration in Jewish
Philosophy," pp. 41-42.
38. The varia is not clear, although the meaning seems to be that the person is able to
sustain the troubles related to intense study.
39. The Hebrew term hitbodadeti can also be translated "I have isolated myself." However,
I prefer this translation because it fits the use of the same term above. See note
35 above.
40. See note 16 above.
41. On this controversial figure see Schwartz, "The Religious Philosophy of Samuel ibn
Zarza"; idem, Philosophy of a Jewish Neoplatonic Circle. On his views on magic see idem,
"Forms of Magic in Jewish Thought in Fourteenth-Century Spain"; idem, Astral Magic
in Medieval Jewish Thought. See also app. 4 in this volume.
42. See Schwartz, Philosophy of a Jewish Neoplatonic Circle, p. 29, for a list of quotations of
Ibn Billya in Ibn Zarza's supercommentary. For more on Ibn Billya see recently Ari
Ackerman, "A Magical Fragment of Ibn Billya's Me'or 'Enayyim," Kabbalah 1 (1996),
pp. 73-80; and Schwartz, Astral Magic in Medieualjewish Thought, pp. 102-103, who SU P"
plied the pertinent bibliography on his thought and writings; as well as his edition of
Ibn Billya's book MagenDauid in Qouetz AlYad, n.s. 12 (1994), pp. 171-206. It is perhaps
pertinent that a Hebrew manuscript that includes Ibn Billya's Magen Dauid has been
•434.
Notes to Pages 275-279
preserved in a single manuscript, copied in 1485, and is found in a Florentine library:
Ms. Florence, Laurenziana-Medicea, Gaddi 155. This manuscript also preserves
another, more widely available work by Ibn Billya: the introduction to his Commentary
on the Thirteen Principles. See Schwartz's edition of Ma^en David, pp. 183-184.
43. This is the Arabic term for Saturn; in the Hebrew text it is spelled in Hebrew
characters.
44. This is the Arabic term for Mercury. Thus it is obvious that the Hebrew form kokhav
ha-Shemesh in the text of the epistle indeed stands for Mercury; see note 21 above.
45. Samuel ibn Zarza, Meqor Hayyim (Mantua, 1559), fol. 21b, printed also in an abridged
edition in Margaliyyot Touah (Ivano-Frankovsk, 1927), fol. 30b. See also Schwartz's
edition of Ibn Billya's Magen David, pp. 181-182.
46. See Daniel P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella (Warburg
Institute, London, 1958), pp. 40-42; and Yates, Giordano Bruno, pp. 35 ff.
47. Gershom Scholem, Elements of the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Joseph ben Shlomo
(Mossad Bialik, Jerusalem 1976), pp. 362-364 (Hebrew); idem, On the Mystical Shape of the
Godhead, trans. J. Neugroschel and J. Chipman (Schocken, New York, 1991), pp. 228-231.
48. Gershom Scholem, "Eine Kabbalistische Erklarung der Prophetie as Selbstbegegung,"
Monatsschriftjiir Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 74 (1930), pp. 285-290; Idel, The
Mystical Experience, pp. 86-100; and Bacchelli, Giouanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto, p. 80.
49. On this issue see Kraus, "Jabbir ibn Hayyan"; Henry Corbin, "Le livre du glorieux de
Jabir ibn Hayyan," Eranos Jahrbuch 18 (1950), pp. 47-114; and idem, "La science de
la Balance et les correspondances entre les mondes en gnose islamique," ibid., 42
(1973), pp. 79-85.
50. See Ibn Ezra, Le liure desjondements astrolo^iques, p. 266. On prophecy, caves, and Saturn
and their possible impact on Sabbatai Tzevi I hope to elaborate elsewhere. See mean-
while M. Idel, "Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi: A New Approach to Sabbateanism," in
Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations jrom the Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Schaefer and
Mark Cohen (Brill, Leiden, 1998), pp. 179-180.
51. See Joseph Shatzmiller, "In Search of the Book of Figures: Medicine and Astrology in
Montpellier at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century," Association for Jewish Studies Review
7 (1982-83), pp. 383-407; idem, "The Forms of the Twelve Constellations: A
Fourteenth-Century Controversy," in Idel, Harvey, and Schweid, Shlomo Pines Jubilee
Volume, 2: 397-408.
52. Idel, Golem, pp. 88-89, 286-287.
53. On the indifference of the Sephardic culture to the magical-linguistic concept of the
Golem as presented by the Ashkenazi recipes, see ibid., pp. 276-278.
54. See Asher Weiser, ed., Abraham Ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Pentateuch, vol. 1 (Mossad
ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1976), p. 94.
55. Ibid., pp. 86-87; and Vajda,Juda benNissim ibnMalka, pp. 112-113 and n. 3.
56. See, e.g., Pirqei de-Rabbi Eliezer (Warsaw, 1852), chap. 36, fol. 84b; and Joseph Dan,
"Teraphim: From Popular Belief to a Folktale," Scripta Hierosolymitana 27 (1978),
pp. 99-106. The gruesome midrashic interpretation has an astonishing parallel in
•435-
Notes to Pages 279-282
B. Dodge, The Fihrist ofal-Nadim, vol. 2 (Columbia University Press, New York, 1970),
pp. 753-754. Descriptions of a prophetic head are also known from some legends
related to Orpheus; I hope to deal with this topic in a separate study.
57. R. Levi ben Gershon, Commentary on the Pentateuch (Venice, 1547), fol. 37c; Vajda, Juda
ben Nissim ibn Mallca, p. 149 n. 3.
58. R. Levi ben Gershon, Commentary on the Pentateuch, fol. 38d.
59. See Vajda, Juda ben Nissim ibn Malka, pp. 149-151. On magic and human imagination in
Renaissance thought see Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, pp. 30-59; Couliano, Eros
and Magic, pp. 28-36.
60. On R. Abraham ben Hananel of Esquira and his work see David de Guensburg,
"LaCabalealaveilledel'apparitionduZohar," ha-Qedemi (1907), pp. 28-36, 111-121.
61. This amalgamation of metals is reminiscent of Hermetic and other ancient practices
of preparing the statues wherein the gods were attracted in order to prophesy. See
Asclepius, in Corpus Hermeticum, ed. and trans. Walter Scott, in Hermetica, vol. 1 (Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1926), p. 358; Brian P. Copenhaver, trans., Hermetica
(Cambridge University Press, New York, 1992), pp. 89-90; Walker, Spiritual and
Demonic Magic, pp. 40-42, 68, 71.
62. R. Abraham ben Hananel of Esquira, Yesod 'Olam, Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 607,
fol. 179a; printed by de Guensburg, "La Cabale a la veille de 1'apparition du Zohar,"
p. 30. Compare also Ms. Moscow, Guensburg 607, fol. 104a. The Arabic phrase,
which is a technical expression, is written in Hebrew letters.
63. On the view, transmitted by R. Yohanan Alemanno and Giordano Bruno, that the calf
was created by means of a pneumatic kind of magic, see Idel, "Hermeticism and
Judaism," pp. 67-68; and chaps. 14 and 20 in this volume.
64. The connection between the cherubim and the teraphim is found in two areas: like the
teraphim, the cherubim were already conceived of as anthropoids in the midrashic
and talmudic literature, where they were presented as little children. However, Ibn
Billya seems to hint at a more active role for the cherubim, namely as pneumatic talis-
mans like the teraphim. On the theosophical and theurgical interpretations of the
cherubim see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 128-135.
65. Ibn Zarza, Meqor Hayyim, fols. 2ib-c.
66. On the metallic nature of the cherubim see R. Abraham of Esquira's Yesod 'Olam,
immediately after the passage quoted at note 62 above; and Schwartz, Astral Magic in
Medieval Jewish Thought, pp. 73-74, 102-103, z 3%~ 2 39-
67. See Schwartz, Philosophy of a Jeunsh Neoplatonic Circle, p. 231.
68. See Idel, "Hermeticism and Judaism," pp. 66-67.
69. R. Yohanan Alemanno, Hei ha-'Olamim, Ms. Mantua, Jewish Community 21, fol. 51a.
70. See Idel, "Jewish Magic from the Renaissance," pp. 84-85; see also ibid., pp. 105-106,
the text of the young Solomon Maimon, who combined Kabbalah and Hermetic magic
in his discussion of the nature of the Temple and the teraphim. For more on this topic
see Idel, Hasidism, pp. 195-198. For magical temples see also app. 4 in this volume for
another text of Alemanno's drawing upon Ibn Zarza.
•436-
Notes to Pages 282-285
71. Seeldel, "The Study Program," pp. 303-330; andapp. 3 in this volume.
72. Genesis 5:24. On the possible source of Alemanno's view of Enoch in Ibn Zarza see
chap. 20.
73. Cf. Idel, Golem, p. 180 n. 28.
74. R. Yohanan Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fol. 25b. For Alemanno's
other discussions of artificial anthropoids see Idel, Golem, pp. 167-175; and chap. 20
above. See also Bacchelli, Giouanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto, p. 76.
75. See, e.g., Alemanno's Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fols. 123a, 127a; and
app. 4 of this volume.
76. See M. Idel, "Kabbalah and Hermeticism in Dame Frances A. Yates's Renaissance," in
Esote'risme, gnoses et imacjinaire symbolique: Melanges ojferts a Antoine Faiure, ed. R. Caron,
J. Godwin, W. J. Hanegraaff, and J.-L. Vieillard-Baron (Peeters, Louvain, 2001),
pp. 71-90; idem, " 'Book of God' and 'Book of Law' in Late 15th Century Florence,"
Accademia 2 (2001), pp. 16-17; an d idem, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 482-492.
77. Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 86.
78. Abravanel's Commentary on 1 Kings 3, printed as part of his Neu'im Rishonim (Hamburg,
1687), fol. i4d. The discussion is in BT, Sanhedrin, fol. 65b. See Idel, Golem, p. 328 n. 6
(Hebrew version).
79. Interest in Ibn Ezra was widespread in the Jewish Renaissance, as the inclusion of his
commentary on the Bible in Miqra'ot Gedolot (Yuan Digarah, Venice, 1568), the printed
edition of traditional commentaries on the Bible, attests.
80. On this author see Georges Vajda, "Recherches sur la synthese philosophico-
kabbalistique de Samuel ibn Motot," Archives d'fiistoire doctrinale et litte'raire du Moyen Ages
27 (i960), pp. 29-63.
81. Toussaint, "Ficino's Orphic Magic"; and Bacchelli, Giovanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto,
pp. 37-38. See also note 8 above.
82. See already Idel, "Hermeticism and Judaism," pp. 68-70; idem, Golem, pp. 175-177.
83. See Bacchelli, Giouanni Pico e Pier Leone da Spoleto, p. 20 n. 74.
84. S. A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico's goo Theses (i486) (Arizona Center for Medieval
and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, 1998), pp. 498-499; and Bacchelli, Giouanni Pico e
Pier Leone da Spoleto, pp. 72-73.
85. See Idel, Golem, pp. 177-180.
86. See app. 4.
87. See Wirszubski, Pico delta Mirandola, especially p. 80.
88. See ibid., pp. 63, 123-125, 132-139, 143-146, 149-152, 161-169.
89. Ibid., pp. 94-98, 100-105.
go. See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, p. 128; idem, Hasidism, pp. 66-71, 159-160.
91. See Idel, Hasidism.
92. See ibid., pp. 157-159.
93. See Jonathan Garb, "The Kabbalah of Rabbi Joseph ibn Sayyah as a Source for the
Understanding of Safedian Kabbalah," Kabbalah 4 (1999), pp. 255-313 (Hebrew); and
idem, Manifestations ofPoiuer.
•437-
Notes to Pages 285-288
94. On the Golem passage in this Kabbalist see Idel, Golem, p. in.
95. See Garb, "The Kabbalah of Rabbi Joseph ibn Sayyah"; idem, Manifestations of Power;
and M. Idel, "Between the Kabbalah of Jerusalem and the Kabbalah of Israel Sarug,"
Shalem 6 (1992), pp. 165-173 (Hebrew).
96. See Gershom Scholem, "The Maggid of Joseph Taitachek and the Revelations
Attributed to Him," Sefunot n (1971-1978), pp. 69-112 (Hebrew); idem, "On the Story
of R. Joseph della Reina," in Hokhma Bina ueDaat: Studies in Jewish History and Thought
Presented to A. Altmann, ed. Siegfried Stein and Raphael Loewe (University of Alabama
Press, University, 1979), pp. 100-108 (Hebrew and English); Moshe Idel, "Inquiries
into the Doctrine of Sejer Ha-Meshiv," Sefunot, n.s. 2 (= vol. 17, ed. J. Hacker [Makhon
ben Tzvi, Jerusalem]) (1983), pp. 185-266 (Hebrew); idem, "Magic and Kabbalah in
the Book of the Responding Entity," in The Solomon Goldman Lectures, ed. M. I. Gruber
(Spertus College of Judaica Press, Chicago, 1993), pp. 125-138. On the attitude to
Christianity see Georges Vajda, "Passages anti-chretiens dans KafHa-Qetoret," Revue de
1'histoire des religions 117 (1980), pp. 45-58; Idel, "The Attitude towards Christianity in
Sefer ha-Meshiv," Zion 46 (1981), pp. 77-91 (Hebrew), English version in Immanuel 12
(1981), pp. 77-95; idem, Messianic Mystics, pp. 126-132.
97. See Idel, "Kabbalah and Hermeticism in Dame Frances A. Yates's Renaissance."
98. See Idel, Absorbing Perfections.
Chapter 22: The Trajectory of Eastern
Kabbalah and Its Reverberations in Italy
1. On his writings see Colette Sirat, "A Letter on the Creation by R. Shemarya b. Elijah
Akriti," Eshel Beer Sheva' 1 (1980), pp. 199-227 (Hebrew); and Mauro Zonta, La jilosojfia
antica nel Medioevo ebraico (Paideia, Brescia, 1996), pp. 75, 146.
2. See Sirat, "A Letter on the Creation," p. 199.
3. Printed by Shmuel David Luzzatto in 'OtzarNehmad, ed. Raphael Kircheim, vol. 2 (1857;
reprint, lerusalem, 1967), pp. 90-94.
4. Ibid., pp. 92-93.
5. See Joseph B. Sermoneta, "Prophecy in the Writings of R. Yehuda Romano," in Studies
in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. Isadore Twersky, vol. 2 (Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1984), pp. 345-346 n. n; and the material discussed by
Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1979), pp. 206-207. For more on prophecy see
Concluding Remarks, sec. 1, in this volume.
6. See Joseph B. Sermoneta, "Una transcrizione in caratteri ebraici di alcuni brani
filosofici della Divina Commedia," in Romanica et Occidentalia: Etudes de'die'es a la me'moire de
H. Peri, ed. Moshe Lazar (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1963), pp. 23-42.
7. See Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 379-395; Ravitzky, History and Faith, pp. 115-153; and Idel,
"Abraham Abulafia," pp. 75-76.
8. See Eric Lawee, Isaac Abrabanel's Stance toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue
(SUNY Press, Albany, 2001), pp. 9, 25, 44, 56, 57, 82, 83.
•438-
Notes to Pages 288-289
9. See C. M. Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, the Last of the Hellenes (Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1986), pp. 23-28; Raymond Marcel, Marsile Ficin (1433-1499) (Belles Lettres,
Paris, 1958), pp. 133-134, 612; Efraim Wust, "Elisha the Greek: A Physician and
Philosopher at the Beginning of Ottoman Period," Pe'amim 41 (1989), pp. 49-57
(Hebrew). Franjois Masai, Plethon et le platonisme de Mistra (Paris, 1956), p. 57, aired the
possibility that Elisha was a Kabbalist, while Michel Tardieu, "Plethon lecteur des
Oracles," Metis 2 (1987), p. 144 n. 7, rejected this possibility, implying (see especially
p. 141) that he was a Spanish Jewish thinker acquainted with Averroes' thought who
arrived in Adrianopole. Though there is indeed no evidence that Elisha was a Kabbalist,
an interest in Averroes does not exclude an interest in Kabbalah, as in the case of
Abraham Abulafia, who introduced Kabbalah in the Byzantine Empire in the 1270s.
Later, in the mid-fourteenth century in Constantinople, a combination of interest
in both Kabbalah, including ecstatic Kabbalah, and medieval philosophy is evident
in R. Elnathan ben Moshe Qalqish's 'Even Sappir, a huge treatise extant in two
manuscripts in Paris, BN 727-728.
10. See Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, pp. 24-25; Tardieu, "Plethon lecteur des
Oracles," pp. 144-146.
11. See James Darmesteter, "Textes Pehlvis relatifs au Judaisme," REJ 19 (1889), p. 56. It
may well be that this is an elaboration on the earlier view that Plato studied with this
prophet, an issue that cannot be discussed in this framework.
12. For a possible source of this view see Joseph Bidez and Franz Cumont, Les mages
helle'nises: Zoroastre, Ostanes et Hystaspe d'apres la tradition (jrecque (Societe d'editions
"Les Belles lettres," Paris, 1938), 2: 21. On Zoroaster as Abraham's student see ibid.,
i: 41 and 2: 48. On the Hebrew sources for such a view see Micah J. bin Gorion, Die
Sacjen derjuden (Schocken, Berlin, 1935), p. 219. See also chap. 13, sec. 3, of this volume
for a discussion of R. Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano.
13. See Henry Corbin, Histoire de la philosophic islamique (Gallimard, Paris, 1964),
pp. 285-286; Tardieu, "Plethon lecteur des Oracles," pp. 144-146; Tambrun, "Marsile
Ficin," pp. 20-22; and Shlomo Pines's remark in the discussion following a lecture
by Franjois Masai, "Plethon, l'Averroisme et la philosophic religieuse," in Le
Ne'oplatonisme, ed. P. M. Schuhl and Pierre Hadot (Presses du Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique, Paris, 1971), p. 445; Efrayyim Wust, "Elisha the Greek,"
Pe'amim 41 (1990), pp. 49-56 (Hebrew).
14. See Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," p. 13; and idem, "On Prophecy and Magic in
Sabbateanism," Kabbalah 8 (2003), pp. 31-32. For more on Kabbalah in the Byzantine
Empire see idem, "Kabbalah in the Byzantine Empire: Preliminary Inquiries," ibid., 18
(2008), pp. 197-227 (Hebrew).
15. SeeSeJer ha-Peliy'ah, pt. I, fols. 5oa-5ia, 58d~59a, 59d-6ob;Idel, "Abraham Abulafia,"
p. 11.
16. Michal Kushnir-Oron, "The Sefer Ha-Peli'ah and Sefer Ha-Kanah: Their Kabbalistic
Principles, Social and Religious Criticism, and Literary Composition" (Ph.D. diss.,
Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 76-80 (Hebrew).
•439-
Notes to Pages 289-291
17. See e.g., Sefer ha-Peliy'ah, pt. I, fols. 23a-d.
18. Kushnir-Oron, "The Sefer Ha-Peli'ah and Sefer Ha-Kanah," pp. 85-102.
19. Jellinek, Beth ha-Midrasch, 3: xxxviii-xlv; and idem, Quntres Taryag (1878; reprint,
Jerusalem, 1972), p. 129. Efraim Gottlieb also accepted this view about possible
locations outside Spain; see Kushnir-Oron, "The Sefer Ha-Peli'ah and Sefer Ha-Kanah,"
p. 23 n. 27.
20. See Israel M. Ta-Shma, "Where Was the Book 'Alilot Devarim Composed?," 'Alei Sefer 3
(1977), pp. 44-53 (Hebrew); and Kushnir-Oron, "The Sefer Ha-Peli'ah and Sefer
Ha-Kanah," pp. 6-18.
21. See Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 117-121.
22. See Haviva Pedaya, Nahmanides: Cyclical Time and Holy Text ('Am 'Oved, Tel Aviv, 2003)
(Hebrew); Moshe Idel, "The Jubilee in Jewish Mysticism," in Millenarismi nella cultura
contemporanea, ed. Enrico Rambaldi (FrancoAngeli, Milan, 2001), pp. 209-232. See
also chap. 12 above for the observation by Elijah del Medigo regarding the affinity
between this kabbalistic theory and Neoplatonism.
23. See Kushnir-Oron, "The Sefer Ha-Peli'ah and Sefer Ha-Kanah," pp. 294-297. This stand
is hinted at in R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, and I hope to demonstrate elsewhere
the nexus between his thought, as found in an unidentified manuscript, and the
Byzantine Kabbalah. See, for the time being, Moshe Idel, "The Meaning of Ta'amei
Ha-'Ofot Ha-Teme'im of R. David ben Yehuda He-Hasid," in Alei Shefer: Studies in the
Literature of Jewish Thought Presented to Rabbi Dr. Alexander Sajran, ed. Moshe Hallamish
(Bar-Ilan University Press, RamatGan, 1990), pp. 11-27 (Hebrew); idem, "Kabbalah,
Hieroglyphicity, and Hieroglyphs," Kabbalah n (2004), pp. 24-25; and idem, Ascensions
on High, pp. 177-178.
24. See Moshe Idel, "On Some Forms of Order in Kabbalah," Da'at 50-52 (2003),
pp. xlix-liv; Scholem, Origins ojthe Kabbalah, pp. 460-475.
25. Scholem, Reshit ha-Qabbalah, pp. 176-193.
26. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 460-461 n. 233.
27. See note 23 above.
28. Kushnir-Oron, "The Sefer Ha-Peli'ah and Sefer Ha-Kanah," pp. 18, 114.
29. Mosheldel, "Neglected Treatises by the Author of Sefer KaJha-Qetoret,"Pe'amim 5 3 (1993),
p. 78 (Hebrew); idem, "On Prophecy and Magic in Sabbateanism," p. 11. More recently
other scholars have adopted this characterization ofTzevi. See, e.g., Avraham Elqayam,
"Sabbatai Sevi's Manuscript of the Zohar," Kabbalah 3 (1998), pp. 358-361 (Hebrew).
30. An issue that does not concern us in the context of the east-to-west trajectory of
Kabbalah's arrival in Italy is the impact of R Nathan Harar's Sefer Sha'arei Tzedeq, and
the influence of R. Yitzhaq of Acre on R Moshe of Kiev's book Shushan Sodot. R Moshe
was a late-fifteenth-century Kabbalist who continued the Byzantine Kabbalah and
preserved some otherwise unknown and important kabbalistic material. See my intro-
duction to Har'ar, Sha'arei Tzedeq, pp. 37, 169, 174, 180,185, 2 3 J > 2 3 2 > 2 4 J > 2 5°-
However, Shushan Sodot, which represents a synthesis of the books and tendencies
described above, did not influence Italian Kabbalah.
•440-
Notes to Pages 291-294
31. See Scholem, Sabbatai Seui, p. 116; Moshe Idel, "Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi: A New
Approach to Sabbateanism," in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations Jrom the
Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Schaefer and Mark Cohen (Brill, Leiden, 1998), pp. 179-180.
32. For a survey of halakhic writings in Byzantium see Israel M. Ta-Shma, "On the
History of Rabbinic Literature in Greece in the Fourteenth Century," Tarbitz 62 (1993),
pp. 101-114 (Hebrew).
33. On the literary structure of the book see Kushnir-Oron, "The Sefer Ha-Peli'ah and Sefer
Ha-Kanah," pp. 337-343.
34. SeeR. Yohanan Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 136a, quoting
Sefer ha-Peliy'ah, pt. II, fol. 17a. See also Collectanea, fols. 37a-b, where additional
quotations are found under the title Sefer ha-Qanah.
35. See, e.g., R Yohanan Alemanno, 'Einei ha-'Edah, Ms. Jerusalem, NUL 8° 598, fols. 101b,
102b, 105a.
36. See Yohanan Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fols. 838b, 104b, noa,
I2ib-i22b. See also his 'Einei ha-'Edah, Ms. Jerusalem, NUL 8° 598, fols. 103b, 104b,
119a, 128a. The anonymous, untitled Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1557, copied in late-
fifteenth-century Italy, presents a combination of all three attitudes: some treatises of
Provengal and Spanish Kabbalah, treatises by Abraham Abulafia, and, at the begin-
ning, some treatises from the cluster of writings related to Sefer ha-Temunah. This
codex attests to the arrival of Byzantine Kabbalah in Italy in the period when Alemanno
was active there.
37. The rich inventory of kabbalistic literature known by Alemanno awaits full identifica-
tion and analysis. I hope to deal elsewhere with the huge amount of kabbalistic
material owned by the da Pisa family in Florence in the generation after the expulsion.
For titles of kabbalistic and other sources available to Alemanno and Giovanni Pico,
see app. 3 in this volume and the material collected in Fabrizio Lelli, "Pico tra filosofia
ebraica e 'Qabbala,' " in Pico, Poliziano e 1'umanesimo di Jine Quattrocento, ed. Paolo Viti
(Leo S. Olschki, Florence, 1994), pp. 193-223.
38. Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds, pp. 184-230; and Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 300-302,
402-422, 432-434.
Concluding Remarks
1. For earlier phenomena among Jews see chap. 4 and Joseph B. Sermoneta, "Prophecy
in the Writings of R. Yehuda Romano," in Studies in Medieualjeiuish History and Literature,
ed. Isadore Twersky, vol. 2 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1984),
PP- 337-374-
2. See Eugenio Garin, "Paolo Orlandi e il profeta Francesco da Meleto," in his La cultura
jilosojica del Rinascimento Italiano (Sansoni, Florence, 1961), pp. 213-233; and Marjorie
Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Late Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (University
of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Ind., 1993), pp. 437-438. Like the other prophets,
da Meleto was in close contact with Jews. See also the chapter devoted to prophecy in
Henri de Lubac, Pic de la Mirandole (Aubier Montaigne, Paris, 1974), pp. 90-113; and
•441-
Notes to Pages 294-296
Marjorie Reeves, "Cardinal Egidio of Viterbo: A Prophetic Interpretation of History,"
in Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period, ed. Reeves (Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1992), pp. 91-109. In this context we should mention also the prophetic aspirations of
R. Asher Lemlein, who was deeply influenced by Abraham Abulafia. See especially
David Tamar, "On R. Asher Lemlein," Zion 52 (1987), 399-401 (Hebrew); as well as
Kupfer, "Visions."
3. See Stephane Toussaint, "L'individuo estatico: Tecniche profetiche in Marsilio Ficino
e Giovanni Pico della Mirandola," Bruniana & Campanelliana: Ricerchejfilosojice e materiali
storico-testuali 6:2 (2000), pp. 351-354. See above, chap. 20, note 59.
4. On this term see also Alemanno's commentary on the Song of Songs, Hesheq Shlomo,
Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1535, fols. 64b-65a, 68a, 106a; and above, chap. 20, note 58.
In one instance the sudden vision is described as obtained by means found in books of
magic, such as the Book ofthe Palm attributed to Abu Aflah, and "Apollonius's" book
on magic. See Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1535, fols. 65a-b. On Hesheq Shlomo see chap. 16
in this volume.
5. R Yohanan Alemanno, Collectanea, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 2234, fol. 95a.
6. See Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 63-66.
7. See Idel, "On the Meanings of the Term 'Kabbalah,' " pp. 58-59.
8. On the impact of Avicenna's thought in general on the fifteenth and sixteenth centu-
ries in Italy, see N. G. Siraisi, Auicenna in Renaissance Italy (Princeton University Press,
Princeton, 1987). See also M. Idel, "Kabbalah, Hieroglyphicity, and Hieroglyphs,"
Kabbalah 11 (2004), pp. 11-47.
g. Alemanno, Sejer Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1535, fol. 63a. This and other,
similar descriptions of the act of contemplation, tzejiyyah, and attaining a vision of the
sefirotic world without symbolic mediation are important examples for an under-
standing of the kataphatic elements in Kabbalah, supporting a more positive type of
theology, which are rather marginalized in modern scholarship, which centers upon
an apophatic, or negative, theological approach. Alemanno adopted the verb TzFH
both from the Heikhalot literature and from his understanding of Abuhamed
al-Ghazzali's Me'oznei Tzedeq, and used it many times. This is an interesting example of
the complexity emerging from a synthesis of different conceptual layers.
10. Paulus Riccius, Ars Cabalistica, ed. Johan Pistorius (Minerva, Frankfurt, 1970), p. 116;
cf. Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggeman, "Christian Kabbala: Joseph Gikatilla (1247-1305),
Johannes Reuchlin (Wilhelm 1455-1522), Paulus Riccius (d. 1541), and Jacob Boehme
(1575-1624)," in The Language of Adam/Die Sprache Adams, ed. Allison Coudert
(Harassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1999), p. 101. This passage had an impact on
Reuchlin's understanding of the Kabbalists when he distinguished between Talmudists
and Kabbalists. See Idel in Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, pp. xxi-xxiii and
122-123. The use of the term "symbol" is important, since it may constitute one of the
sources of Reuchlin's position on receptio symbolica, discussed at the end of this chapter.
11. See Yates, The Occult Philosophy, p. 189. See also idem, Giordano Bruno, p. 92; and more
recently the similar formulation in Charles Lohr, "Metaphysics," in The Cambridge
•442-
Notes to Pages 296-298
History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard
Kessler, and Jill Kraye (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988), pp. 580-581.
12. See Isadore Twersky, "The Contribution of Italian Sages to Rabbinic Literature," Italia
Judaica 1 (1983), pp. 383-400; Israel M. Ta-Shma, "Nimmuqei Humash le-Rabbi Isaiah
mi-Tram," Qiryat Sefer 64 (1992-93), pp. 751-753 (Hebrew); idem, "R. Jesaiah di
Trani the Elder and His Connections with Byzantium and Palestine," Shalem 4 (1984),
pp. 409-416 (Hebrew) ; and Ephraim Kanarfogel, "Mysticism and Asceticism in Italian
Rabbinic Literature of the Thirteenth Century," Kabbalah 6 (2001), p. 139 nn. 15-16
(Hebrew).
13. On the absence of Christian kabbalistic literature from the Iberian peninsula, see my
review of "Swietlicki's Spanish Christian Cabala," Jewish Quarterly Review 78 (1988),
pp. 310-313.
14. On this approach see Idel, Ascensions on High, pp. 11-12.
15. See Boaz Huss, "Sefer ha-Zohar as a Canonical, Sacred, and Holy Text: Changing
Perspectives in the Book of Splendor between the Thirteenth and Eighteenth
Centuries," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 7 (1998), pp. 257-307; M. Idel,
"R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid's Translation of the Book of the Zohar," Alei Sefer 8
(1980), pp. 60-73 (Hebrew).
16. See R. Yitzhaq ben Sheshet, Responsum, no. 157, printed in Adolph Jellinek, Auswahl
Kabbalistischer Mystilc, vol. 1 (Colditz, Leipzig, 1853), pp. 49-52.
17. See Idel, "Between," p. 93 n. 37.
18. Idel, "The Study Program," p. 310.
19. Ibid., pp. 310-311 n. 68.
20. See Kupfer, "Visions," pp. 412, 417, 422. On Abulafia's profound influence on Lemlein
I hope to expand elsewhere.
21. See M. Idel, "The Throne and the Seven-Branched Candlestick — Pico dellaMirandola's
Hebrew Source, "JWCI 40 (1977), pp. 290-292.
22. Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy (Littman Library of
Jewish Civilization and Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990), pp. 278-280. On Sefer
'Or ha-Sekhel, a classic of ecstatic Kabbalah, written in Sicily and dedicated to two of
Abulafia's disciples, Nathan ben Sa'adyah Harar and Abraham Shalom, see Idel,
"Abraham Abulafia," pp. 24-25 and 54-55 n. 161, for a list of manuscripts of this
book, many of them stemming from Italy; and also Har'ar, Sha'arei Tzedeq, index,
s.v. 'Or ha-Selchel, p. 539.
23. The most important among them is a document written by R. Jacob Israel Finzi, a
mid-sixteenth-century Italian Kabbalist, found in Ms. Parma 2232 (1326) and printed
as app. 6 of Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, together with other information. In the 1998
edition of this work, 1: 84, 151, 1 quoted from Ms. Parma 2232 and referred to the Finzi
family as descendants of Recanati without mentioning the famous name Finzi. Giulio
Busi, "Menahem Finzi of Recanati: The True Name of an Old Acquaintance," Materia
Giudaica 8:1 (2003), pp. 213-218, apparently overlooked those references in my book —
which he nevertheless quotes in another context in his article — and implies that he
•443.
Notes to Pages 298-300
was the first to find the document in the Parma manuscript, and thus that he has
established the "true" family name of Recanati. See also below, note 25.
24. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 151.
25. The occurrence of the term Makkaby twice in the context of the proper name Yehudah
must have something to do with the ancient hero of the Maccabean revolt, Yehudah
the Hasmonean. The fact that the name Finzi occurs twice in this context demands an
additional inquiry, as the very meaning of the name is not clear.
26. See the testimony printed by Gottlieb, Studies, pp. 357-360. For more about this
Kabbalist see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 2: app. 6.
27. Ms. Parma, de Rossi 99. In R. Jacob Israel's list of names there is no Mordekhai; thus
Scholem's assumption that the author Yitzhaq Eliahu is R. Yitzhaq ben Mordekhai of
Mantua is not plausible. See Gershom Scholem, "On the Questions Related to Sejer
Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut and Its Commentators," Qiryat Sefer 21 (1944), pp. 288-291
(Hebrew).
28. See Lelli, La lettera preziosa, pp. 9, 255-261. For more on Recanati's influence on
Genazzano see Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 2: chap. 22.
29. See, e.g., Alemanno, Hesheq Shelomo, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1535, fol. 64a. See also
Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 2: app.
30. Isaac ben Jacob ha-Kohen, Ma'amar ha-'Atzilut ha-Smalit, ed. G. Scholem, in Madda'ei
ha-Yahadut, vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1927) (Hebrew); and Joseph Dan, "Samael, Lilith, and
the Concept of Evil in Early Kabbalah," AJS Review 5 (1980), pp. 17-40.
31. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 93.
32. See Avraham Elqayam, "Issues in the Commentary of R. Reuben Zarfati on the Book
Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut" (M.A. thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 13-32
(Hebrew).
33. See above, chap. 21, note 96.
34. See Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, pp. 258-259; Georges Vajda, "Passages anti-
chretiens dans Kaf Ha-Qetoret," Reuue de 1'histoire des religions 117 (1980), pp. 45-58;
M. Idel, "The Attitude towards Christianity in Sejer ha-Meshiu," Zion 46 (1981),
pp. 77-91 (Hebrew), English version in Immanue! 12 (1981), pp. 77-95; idem, Messianic
Mystics, pp. 126-132; and Abraham Gross, Iberian Jewry jromTunlujht to Daum: The World
of Rabbi Abraham Saba (Brill, Leiden, 1995), pp. 133-137. In Italy it is found to a certain
extent in Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano.
35. See Eco, The Search Jor the Perfect Language, 46-52; Harar, Sha'arei Tzedeq, pp. 91-112; and
app. 2 of this volume.
36. See Idel, "Kabbalah, Hieroglyphicity, and Hieroglyphs," pp. 14-15; and R. David
ben Yehudah he-Hasid's Commentary on the Alphabets, printed in Alei Sefer 9 (1981),
pp. 84-94 (Hebrew). A similar stand is found in Sefer ha-Temunah, discussed in the
previous chapter.
37. Moshe Idel, "Nahmanides: Kabbalah, Halakhah, and Spiritual Leadership," in Jeurish
Mystical Leaders and Leadership, ed. M. Idel and M. Ostow (Jason Aronson, Northvale,
N.J., 1998), pp. 58-59.
•444.
Notes to Pages 300-302
38. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 136-144.
39. See Idel, "Between."
40. Ibid.
41. See Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 137-143; and idem, "Nahmanides," pp. 54-59.
42. See Idel, R. Menahem Recanati, 1: 189-214.
43. On the two groups see Idel, "Nahmanides," pp. 15-59; idem, "The lubilee in Jewish
Mysticism," in Millenarismi nella cultura contemporanea, ed. Enrico Rambaldi
(FrancoAngeli, Milan, 2001), pp. 209-232; Haviva Pedaya, Nahmanides: Cyclical Time
and Holy Text ('Am 'Oved, Tel Aviv, 2003), pp. 91-118 (Hebrew); Daniel Abrams,
"Orality in the Kabbalistic School of Nahmanides: Preserving and Interpreting
Esoteric Traditions and Texts," Jewish Studies Quarterly 3 (1996), pp. 85-102.
44. See Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, pp. 85-137.
45. Gershom Scholem, "On the Story of R. Joseph della Reina," in Holchma Bina veDaat:
Studies in Jewish History and Thought Presented to A. Altmann, ed. Siegfried Stein and
RaphaelLoewe (University of Alabama Press, University, 1979), pp. 100-108 (Hebrew);
Moshe Idel, "Inquiries into the Doctrine of Sefer Ha-Meshiu," Sejunot, n.s. 2 (= vol. 17,
ed. J. Hacker [Makhon ben Tzvi, Jerusalem]) (1983), pp. 185-266 (Hebrew).
46. For Tzarfati's attenuation of an ancient myth see Elqayam, "Issues," p. 62 n. 78. For
Alemanno's attenuation of the more dynamic kabbalistic theosophy as espoused by
Hayyat see Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 222-223; idem,
"Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, " in Neoplatonism
and Jewish Thought, ed. Lenn E. Goodman (SUNY Press, Albany, 1993), pp. 341-342.
47. See Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance; Don Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah
(University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1963); idem, Mysteriously Meant (Johns Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore, 1970), pp. 279-311; Marco Ariani, Imago Jabulosa: Mito e
allegoria nei "Dialoghi dAmore" di Leone Ebreo (Bulzoni Editore, Rome, 1984). On the
hermeneutical framework in the Renaissance see Couliano, Eros and Magic, pp. 11-12.
48. Jean Seznec, The Suruiual ojthe Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in
Renaissance Humanism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1972), p. 287.
49. I take this term from Giuseppe Mazzotta, Cosmopoiesis: The Renaissance Experiment
(University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2001). See Moshe Idel, "On Some Forms of
Order in Kabbalah," Da'at 50-52 (2003), pp. xlix-liv.
50. An example is Christian Kabbalah, whose emergence as an intellectual phenomenon
and whose appearance in print seem to me to have influenced the politics of dissemina-
tion among Jewish Kabbalists. I cannot enter here into as detailed a discussion of this
issue as I have done elsewhere. See, e.g., Idel, Messianic Mystics, pp. 134-136; idem,
"Religion, Thought, and Attitudes: The Impact of the Expulsion on the Jews," in Spain
and the Jews: The Sephardi Experience, 1492 and After, ed. Elie Kedourie (Thames and
Hudson, London, 1992), pp. 123-139. In our specific context let me point out that in his
voluminous writings Alemanno never referred to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
I assume also that Genazzano wrote after 1492, and he, too, did not mention the event,
although he criticized views expressed by one of the expellees, R. Isaac Abravanel.
•445.
Notes to Pages 302-304
51. See Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Jewish Publication Society, Philadelpia, 1977).
52. See the seminal study of Yosef B. Sermoneta, "Scholastic Philosophical Literature in
Rabbi YosefTaitasak's Porat Yosef," Sefunotn (1971-1978), pp. 135-185 (Hebrew).
53. Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds, pp. 235-236.
54. See especially Shlomo Pines, "Medieval Doctrines in Renaissance Garb?: Some Jewish
and Arabic Sources of Leone Ebreo's Doctrines," in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth
Century, ed. B. D. Cooperman (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1983),
pp. 365-398; David B. Ruderman, "Hope against Hope: Jewish and Christian
Messianic Expectations in the Late Middle Ages," in Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the
History ofthejeurish People Presented to Pro/. Haim Beinart, ed. A. Mirsky, A. Grossman, and
J. Kaplan (Makhon ben Tzvi, Jerusalem, 1991), pp. 185-202; reprinted in Essential
Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. D. B. Ruderman (New York
University Press, New York, 1992), pp. 299-323.
55. Idel, "Major Currents in Italian Kabbalah between 1560-1660," Italia Judaica 2 (1986),
pp. 243-262; reprinted in Ruderman, Essential Papers, pp. 345-368; Idel, "Particularism
and Universalism," pp. 324-344.
56. See Gershom Scholem, "The Beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah," in The Christian
Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and Their Christian Interpreters, ed. J. Dan (Harvard College
Library, Cambridge, Mass., 1997), pp. 30-38. On Paulus de Heredia see Frangois
Secret, "L'Ensis Pauli de Paulus de Heredia," Sejarad 26 (1966), pp. 79-102, 254-271.
Heredia visited Sicily for a while (ibid., p. 100), and in my opinion this visit accounts
for some acquaintance with R. Abraham Abulafia's kabbalistic thought, which was
almost entirely ignored in Spain.
57. Scholem, "The Beginnings of Christian Kabbalah," pp. 31-32; Secret, "L'Ensis Pauli,"
pp. 86-89.
58. Scholem, "The Beginnings of Christian Kabbalah," pp. 36-38; David B. Ruderman,
The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol
(Hebrew Union College Press, Cincinnati, 1991), pp. 43-51; Gross, Iberian Jewry from
Twilight to Dawn, p. 148 n. 88.
59. On this issue see Idel, "Particularism and Universalism."
60. See David Kaufmann, "Elia Menachem Chalfan on Jews Teaching Hebrew to
Non-Jews," Jewish Quarterly Review 9 (1896-97), pp. 500-508.
61. For other positive reactions to the first stage of Luther's activity, which was tolerant
toward Judaism, see Hayyim Hihel Ben-Sasson, "The Reformation in Contemporary
Jewish Opinion," in Proceedings of the Israel Academy 0/ Sciences and Humanities, vol. 4
(Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 239-326.
62. In Hebrew galuyyiot, meaning literally "exiles." However, there seems no reason to
doubt that he is referring to the late-fifteenth-century expulsions from the Iberian
peninsula, and perhaps also to the later expulsion of Jews from Sicily.
63. R. Elijah Menahem Halfan, Epistle, Ms. New York, JTS 1822, fol. 154b; and see Idel,
"The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 186-187. I hope to elaborate
elsewhere on the content of this text.
•446-
Notes to Pages 304-308
64. See the text printed by David Kaufmann, "Elia Menachem Chalfan on Jews Teaching
Hebrew to Non-Jews," Jewish Quarterly Review 9 (1986-87), pp. 500-508.
65. Yates, Giordano Bruno, pp. 155-156.
66. Ibid., p. 156.
67. Yates, The Occult Philosophy, p. 189.
68. See Charles Zika, "Reuchlin's De Verbo Mirifico and the Magical Debate of the Late
Fifteenth Century," JWCI 39 (1976), pp. 104-138.
69. For the contribution of the Hermetic magic of the Renaissance to later magical practices
in various parts of Europe, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Scribner,
New York, 1971), pp. 222-231; R. J. W. Evans, Rudolfll and His World: A Study in Intellectual
History (1576-1612) (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984); Charles Schmitt, "John Case on
Art and Nature," Annals of Science 33 (1976), pp. 543-559. See also the collection of
articles in Presence d'Hermes Trismegiste, published as part of the series Cahiers de
l'Hermeticisme (Albin Michel, Paris, 1988), especially the studies by Antoine Faivre,
pp. 13-56, 223-232; and his contribution in Hermeticism and the Renaissance, ed. Ingrid
Merkel and Allen G. Debus (Folger Books, Washington, D.C., 1988), pp. 424-435.
70. See especially Brian Copenhaver, "Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus, and the Question of
a Philosophy of Magic in the Renaissance," in Merkel and Debus, Hermeticism and the
Renaissance, pp. 79-110.
71. Trinkaus, In Our Likeness and Image, vol. 2; Idel, "Hermeticism and Judaism," pp. 62-68.
72. Yates, Giordano Bruno, pp. 398-455.
73. See Jonathan Garb, "The Kabbalah of Rabbi Joseph ibn Sayyah as a Source for the
Understanding of Safedian Kabbalah," Kabbalah 4 (1999), pp. 255-313 (Hebrew).
74. See Idel, Hasidism, pp. 65-81.
75. Ibid.
76. See R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550-1700 (Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1979), pp. 346-418; and idem, Rudolfll and His World.
77. See Idel, Hasidism, pp. 45-145; and idem, "Hermeticism and Kabbalah," in Hermeticism
jrom Late Antiquity to Humanism, ed. P. Lucentini, I. Parri, and V. P. Compagni
(Turnhout, Brespols, 2004), pp. 389-408.
78. See Moshe Idel, "The Besht as Prophet and as Talismanic Magician," in Yoau Elstein's
Festschrift, ed. Avi Lipsker and Rela Kushelevsky (Bar Ilan University Press, Ramat Gan,
2005), pp. 119-143 (Hebrew).
79. See also Tishby, The Wisdom ojthe Zohar, 1: 31.
80. See Scholem, Origins ojthe Kabbalah, p. 424.
81. Idem, Major Trends, p. 26. For more on these issues see chap. 10, sec. 2. Scholem never
revealed the precise content of the "strict" sense of symbolism.
82. Idem, On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time and Other Essays, ed. Abraham
Shapira, trans. Jonathan Chipman (JPS, Philadelphia, 1997), p. 140. See also idem,
Major Trends, p. 27. For more on pansymbolism in modern scholarship and a critique
of this view see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 273-280; idem, "Zur Funktion von
Symbolen bei G. G. Scholem," in Gershom Scholem: Literatur und Retorik, ed. Stephane
•447.
Notes to Pages 308-310
Moses and Sigrid Weigel (Boehlau Verlag, Cologne, 2000), pp. 53-55; now in my Old
Worlds, Neiu Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought (University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2010), pp. 83-108; as well as chap. 10 of this volume.
83. Reuchlin, On the Art ofKabbalah, p. 39.
84. Ibid., p. 241.
85. Ibid., p. 39. See also chap. 18 of this volume.
86. See Scholem, On the Kabbalah, p. 87. On Schelling's influence on Scholem on this point
see the sources cited by Elliot R. Wolfson, Aleph, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time,
Truth, and Death (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006), pp. 193-194 n. 225.
87. See, e.g., Joseph Dan, "The Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin and Its Historical
Significance," in The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and Their Christian
Interpreters, ed. Dan (Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Mass., 1997), p. 80.
88. On this phenomenon in general see Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, pp. 1-6.
89. Gershom Scholem, DieErforschung derKabbala Don Reuchlin biszurGegenwart (Selbstverlag
der Stadt, Pforzheim, 1969), p. 7.
90. Ibid.
91. See ibid., pp. 23-24; idem, Major Trends, p. 26.
92. See David Biale, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, and Counter-History (Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 138-140; Susan Handelman, Fragments of
Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem, and Leuinas (Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, 1991), pp. 125-126.
93. Gershom Scholem, "Die Stellung der Kabbala in europaischen Geistgeschichte,"
Berlin Jahrbuch, 1981-82, pp. 283-284.
94. I pointed out the importance of Reuchlin's symbolic understanding ofKabbalah both
in my 1993 introduction to Reuchlin, On the Art of Kabbalah, pp. xv-xvi, and in a more
comprehensive lecture on this topic in 1999 at the Advanced Center of Judaic Studies
in Philadelphia. I hope to analyze elsewhere the various meanings of "symbol" in
Reuchlin. See meanwhile Idel, Ascensions on High, pp. 13-16; and Giulio Busi, "Die
Kabbala als eine symbolische Option," in Reuchlin und Italien, ed. Gerald Doerner (Jan
Thorboeke Verlag, Stuttgart, 1999), pp. 57-67. On the importance of Pythagoras for
the arts in the Renaissance see Robert Klein, Form and Meaning: Writings on the
Renaissance and Modern Art, trans. Madeline Jay and Leon Wieseltier (Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1979), pp. 43-53.
95. More recently Joseph Dan and Elliot R. Wolfson (in Language, Eros, Being) have reiter-
ated Scholem's unqualified pansymbolism and emphasized apophantic structures of
thought in Kabbalah as a whole. Both, like Scholem, and to some degree Ernst
Cassirer in his theory of the symbolic approach, attenuate the magical and to a certain
extent also the theurgical elements in the general economy of kabbalistic literatures. I
hope to devote a separate study to the problems created by this return to an essentialist
understanding ofKabbalah.
96. See Arnaldo Momigliano, Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism, ed. Silvia Berti, trans.
Maura Masella-Gayley (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994), pp. 193-196.
•448-
Notes to Pages 310-312
97. Idel, "Kabbalah, Hieroglyphicity, and Hieroglyphs," pp. 39-46.
98. See Arnaldo Momigliano, "The Jews of Italy," in Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism,
pp. 133-134. See also Moshe Idel, "Arnaldo Momigliano and Gershom Scholem on
Jewish History and Tradition," in Momigliano and the Antiquaries: The Foundations of
Modern Cultural History, ed. Peter Miller (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2007),
PP- 312-333-
99. See Idel, Kabbalah: Neu> Perspectives, pp. n-12.
100. See Robert Bonfil, "Myth, Rhetoric, History?: A Study in the Chronicle of 'Ahima'atz,"
in Culture and Society in Medieual Jeiury: Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Haim Hillel ben
Sasson, ed. Menahem ben Sasson, Robert Bonfil, and Joseph R. Hacker (Zalman
Shazar Center, Jerusalem, 1989), pp. 99-135 (Hebrew).
101. Seeapp. 3.
102. See the texts by the two authors translated in Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,
pp. 63-64.
103. See, e.g., Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, for an emphasis on theosophy and symbol-
ism and a maginalization of magic and theurgy. Just as Scholem was a Reuchlin
rediuiuus, Wolfson is a Scholem rediuiuus both in his approach to the role of symbol in
Kabbalah as a whole and in his emphasis on the similarity between the ancient
Gnostic understanding of the androgyne and the kabbalistic theosophy. In his
emphasis on the centrality of the androgynous ideal, however, he follows Carl Jung's
and Mircea Eliade's metaphysics. See in more detail Idel, Kabbalah and Eros,
pp. 53-103-
104. See Idel, Kabbalah: Neu; Perspectives, pp. 1-6; and Amos Funkenstein, "Gershom
Scholem: Charisma, 'Kairos,' and the Messianic Dialectic," History and Memory 4
(1992), pp. 123-142.
105. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, p. 390.
106. Ibid., p. 389. Wolfson's assumption is that the male divine structure absorbs the
female element in order to ensure a state of perfection. Note the singular form of the
terms "symbolic view" and "medieval Kabbalah." As I have attempted to point out,
even among the symbolic Kabbalists there are different symbolic systems. Some of
them are anthropomorphic; some are familial — father, mother, sons, and daughter;
some are vegetal — the sefirotic tree; others are geometrical — circles, centers, and
lines — or historical — exile and redemption — or geographical; and so on. See Idel,
Absorbing Perfections, pp. 280-293, 298-305; idem, Ben, pp. 377-385.
107. Wolfson's recurrent use of the terms "incarnation" and "flesh" in kabbalistic
contexts in which they are, in my opinion, gratuitous, is also fascinating. See his
Language, Eros, Being, passim; and Idel, Ben, pp. 57-63. For the conviction that
Kabbalah hides Christian tenets see the views of Giovanni Pico quoted in chap. 19 in
this volume.
108. Idel, Ben, p. 392 n. 12: "I seek in my work to render poetically the teachings promul-
gated by kabbalists." Giovanni Pico intended to entitle his commentary on Girolamo
Benivieni's poems "poetical theology"; Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, p. 155.
•449-
Notes to Pages 313-316
iog. For other models in Kabbalah and Hasidism see Garb, Manifestations of Power;
and Ron Margolin, The Human Temple: Religious Interiorization and the Structuring of
Inner Life in Hasidism (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2005) (Hebrew). For different
models involving kabbalistic understandings of eros see Idel, Kabbalah and Eros,
especially chap. 3.
no. See Idel, Eros and Magic, pp. 37-38.
in. See Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization ojthe Renaissance (Modern Library, New York,
2002); and Klein, Form and Meaning, pp. 34-36.
112. See Henry Thode, Franz von Assisi und die Anfdnge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien
(G. Grote, Berlin, 1885); and Klein, Form and Meaning, p. 35.
Appendix i: The Angel Named Righteous
1. See also Sara Tzfatman, The Jeunsh Tale in the Middle Ages: Between Ashkenaz and Sefarad
(Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1993), p. 132 (Hebrew), for the shift in Italy between
phases of importation to one of exportation of Jewish culture.
2. See Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 2: 194-195 and 3: 148. Themes related to mythologems
found in the Heikhalot literature are discernible in early medieval poetry arriving in
Italy from the land of Israel and then from Ashkenaz. See, e.g., Idel, "The Concept of
the Torah," pp. 40-44. See also above, Introduction, note 32. R. Moshe ben
Qalonymos, the person who moved from Lucca to Mainz and brought the esoteric
corpus there, is known basically as a poet. Also pertinent to understanding the con-
tinuity of the earlier mystical literatures in Europe is the legend about the affinities
between R. Eleazar ha-Qallir's poetic activity and his ascent to the Merkavah. See Idel,
Ascensions on High, p. 63 n. 59.
3. Taqqif. However, the version quoted by Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 2: 194, has toqef.
4. The transformation of the human Enoch into the angelic power consists in assimila-
tion to the fiery nature of the supernal world as described in both the rabbinic and
Heikhalot literature. See Moshe Idel, "Enoch Is Metatron," Immanuel 24/25 (1990),
pp. 220-222. The dating of R. 'Amittai's creativity is important to understanding the
development of the concept of Enoch as a righteous. Later medieval authors' views of
Enoch as righteous have an antecedent at least as early as the mid-ninth century. For
more on this issue see Idel, Ben, pp. 645-670. On fire on high see also below, note 7.
5 . I assume that there is a parallelism between the first part of this verse and the second,
in which the equivalence between 'or, "light, " and the Torah is mentioned. The use of
'or may have something to do with the alliteration of Torah and 'or. See the parallelism
between the two in Proverbs 1:8.
6. Namely, Metatron teaches the Torah to the dead children. On this theme see also
'Amittai ben Palti'el, Megillat Ahima'atz, ed. Benjamin Klar (Tarshish, Jerusalem,
1974), p. 70. See already BT, Avodah Zarah, fol. 3b.
7. According to many midrashic statements, the Torah was written as a black fire upon
a white fire. See Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 45-50.
•450-
Notes to Page 316
8. For the use of this term in other contexts related to an angelic activity of bringing a
diadem wrought of the prayers of Israel to the head of God, see Idel, Kabbalah: Neiv
Perspectives, pp. 191-197; and Wolfson, "Metatron," p. 83 n. 112.
g. The addition of a crown to the letters of the Torah is attributed to God in rabbinic
literature. See BT, Shabbat, fol. 89a.
10. Cf. Proverbs 10:25.
n. 'Amittai, Metjillat 'Ahima'atz, pp. 81-82.
12. On the angel of the Torah see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 140-142, 145-146, 173-178.
On Yefeifiah as angel of the Torah see the introduction to a book of magic titled
Ma'ayan Hokhmah, printed by Jellinek, Beth. ha-Midrasch, 1: 58-59; Idel, "The Concept
of the Torah," pp. 27-28; Michael Swartz, Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early
Jewish Mysticism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996), pp. 166-167, I 79 _I 8 I >
191. For a discussion of Yefeifiah as the angel of the Torah, see also R. Nehemiah ben
Shlomo's Commentary on the Seventy Names oJMetatron, ed. J. Epstein (Lemberg, 1865),
para. 36, fol. 5b, a book that will be dealt with later in this appendix; as well as an
anonymous liturgical poem, which I have identified as written by him, edited in
M. Idel, "An Unknown Poem for Yom ha-Kippurim by R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo
ha-Navi' , " in Rishonim va-Aharonim: Studies in Jeivish History Presented to Abraham Grossman,
ed. loseph Hacker, B.-Z. Keidar, and Joseph Kaplan (Merkaz Shazar, Jerusalem,
2009), pp. 244, 252 (Hebrew).
13. Namely the footstool of God's feet. Cf. Isaiah 66:1.
14. On the appointment of an angel upon the face of God see Moshe Idel, "Metatron —
Observations on the Development of Myth in Judaism," in Myth in Judaism, ed. Haviva
Pedaya (Ben Gurion University Press, Beer Sheva, 1996), pp. 22-44 (Hebrew); and
now idem, The Angelic World, pp. 74-92. See also in another poem by 'Amittai, Megillat
Ahima'atz, p. 91, qelasterpanim, "the configuration of the face."
15. Namely together with other angels. In some texts in the Heikhalot literature there is a
plurality of angels of the countenance.
16. 'Er. Perhaps it should be read 'iyr, namely a sort of angel.
17. 'Amittai, Megillat Ahima'atz, p. 80. In several late-antique sources the higher angels,
especially Shema'y'el, silence the song of the chorus of angels in order to allow the
prayers of the Jews to be heard. See, e.g., R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo's Commentary on the
Seventy Names oJMetatron, para. 25, fol. 4a. (Unless specified otherwise, citations of
this work are from Epstein's edition.)
18. See BT, Hacjujah, fol. 12b; Midrash Tehilim on Psalms 136:5, ed. Shlomo Buber
(Vilnius, 1891), p. 520. On humans — namely the apostles — as pillars see already in
Paul. See the bibliography in Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Early
Christianity (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., 2003), p. 158 n. 6. For the view of the
four evangelists as supporting the world in a manner reminiscent of Atlas, see Erwin
Panovsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (Harper
Torchbooks, New York, 1962), p. 20 n. 10 and plates 7-8. The use of the four figures
•451-
Notes to Pages 317-318
as supporting heaven may echo Ezekiel 1, where the four beasts support the Divine
Chariot.
19. On this dual function see Panovsky, Studies in Iconolocjy, p. 20 n. 10 and plates 7-8.
20. For a quotation of the talmudic passage without any significant interpretation of the
nature of the righteous or pillar, see R. Eleazar of Worms, Sodei Razayya', ed. Shalom
Weiss (Sha'arey Ziv, Jerusalem, 1991), p. 37.
21. See Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 2: 195.
22. On this figure see Idel, "Some Forlorn Writings." On the rabbinic and other
late-antique discussions of the pillar see Idel, Ascensions on High, pp. 74-79.
23. R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, Commentary on the Hajtarah, Ms. Berlin, Or. 942, fol. 153b.
See also Moshe Idel, "The World of Angels in Human Shape," in Jerusalem Studies in
Jeurish Thought = Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature Presented to
Isaiah Tishby, ed. Joseph Dan and Joseph Hacker (Institute for Jewish Studies, Hebrew
University, Jerusalem, 1986), p. 8; now in Idel, The Angelic World, pp. 26-27.
24. Ms. Berlin, Or. 942, fol. 153b. Cf. Deuteronomy 33:27.
25. Ms. Berlin, Or. 942, fol. 153b. The numerical value of the two Hebrew words is
identical: 48.
26. I assume that this view represents not only an earlier understanding of the relation-
ship between the chief angel and the world but also a theme that was accepted in the
main school of Ashkenazi esotericism. See also R Amittai's use of this verb in
another poem, printed in Mecjillat Ahima'atz, p. 78. 1 delivered a lecture on this topic at
the Dinur Center, Hebrew University, in 2000, and I hope to elaborate upon this issue
elsewhere. See also the view that the world depends on the palm of Metatron in
Ms. Jerusalem, NUL 8° 1136, fol. 26b, from the circle of R Nehemiah ben Shlomo.
27. Ms. Berlin, Or. 942, fol. 155b, also from the circle of R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo. A
question on which I cannot elaborate here is the possible contribution of this passage,
and some others in the same text, to the concepts of cherubim in Ashkenazi esoteric
literature. See Dan, The "Unique Cherub" Circle; and Eliot R. Wolfson, Along the Path:
Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics (SUNY Press, Albany, 1995),
especially pp. 61-62.
28. Ms. Berlin, Or. 942, fol. 153a. See Idel, "The World of Angels in Human Shape,"
pp. 1-15; now in Idel, The Angelic World, pp. 19-33.
29. See R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, Ms. Jerusalem, NUL 4 6246, fols. 5b-6a. This text has
been printed in Shlomo Musajoff, Merlcauah Shelemah (Solomon, Jerusalem, 1921).
Yuppiy'el, like Yefeyfyah, was sometimes identified as the angel of the Torah and thus
also with Metatron.
30. See an edition of R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo's Commentary on the Seventy Names of
Metatron, R. Abraham Hamoi, ed., Sefer Beit Din (Livorno, 1858), fol. 3b, no. 22; fol. 4a,
no. 24; fol. 4b, no. 30; fol. 6b, no. 49; fol. 8a, no. 61; and fol. gb, no. 76. On the
anthropomorphic aspect of the hand of God see Meir Bar-IIan, "The Hand of God:
A Chapter in Rabbinic Anthropomorphism," in Rashi 1040-iggo: Homma^e a Ephraim
•452-
Notes to Pages 318-320
E. Urbach, ed. Gabrielle Sed-Rajna (Le Cerf, Paris, 1993), pp. 321-335- On the various
versions of this treatise, see Dan, The Esoteric Theology, pp. 220-221; idem, "The
Seventy Names of Metatron," in Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish
Studies, Division C (World Union of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 19-23;
Yehuda Liebes, "The Angels of the Shofar and Yeshua Sar ha-Panim," in Early Jewish
Mysticism, ed. J. Dan (Institute for Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 171-196
(Hebrew); Daniel Abrams, "The Boundaries of Divine Ontology: The Inclusion
and Exclusion of Metatron in the Godhead," Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994),
pp. 301 n. 33, 302-305; Wolfson, "Metatron"; and, more recentiy, Idel, "Some
Forlorn Writings."
31. R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, Commentary on the Seventy Names of Metatron, Ms. Rome,
Angelica 46, fol. 35a; and another version in Ms. New York, JTS 2026, fol. 8a. Yuppiy'el
amounts, like 'Ofan, to 137.
32. Tahsasyah = 543 = Tzaddiq ba' 'alay Yesod 'Olam.
33. This is a pun on the Hebrew verb SBL, which means both "to sustain" and "to suffer."
34. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, Commentary on the Seventy Names of Metatron, printed in Sefer
ha-Hesheq, ed. Isaac M. Epstein (Lemberg, 1865), para. 50, fol. 6b.
35. Both words amount in gematria to 215.
36. Ms. Rome, Angelica 46, para. 49, fol. 6b. See also para. 5, fol. ib, and para. 42, fol. 5b.
37. This phrase occurs in the context of God, ibid., para. 33, fol. 5a.
38. Ibid., para. 24, fol. 4a. See also Abrams, "The Boundaries of Divine Ontology,"
pp. 301-302.
39. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, Commentary on the Hajtarah, Ms. Berlin, Or. 942, fol. 154a.
See also Wolfson, "Metatron," p. 78.
40. Scholem, Reshit ha-Qabbalah, pp. 213-214, 219; and Idel, "The World of Angels in
Human Shape," pp. io-ii; now in idem, The Angelic World, pp. 26-27. This material
was written by either R. Eleazar ha-Darshan or his son R. Moshe Azriel, and is found
in Ms. Rome, Angelica 46, discussed in chap. 7, sec. 7.
41. BT, Hagigah, fol. 12b.
42. Printed by Scholem, Reshit ha-Qabbalah, p. 253. For a discussion of the context of this
passage on the basis ofan unknown manuscript see now Idel, Ben, pp. 651-654.
43. Eusebius ofCaesarea, PraeparatioEvangelicaIX.17; for the English, see Preparation Jor the
Gospel, trans. Edwin H. Gifford, vol. 1 (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1981),
p. 451. See also Helge Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalypticism: The Mesopotamian Background of
the Enoch Figure and the Son of Man (Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1988),
pp. 115-116, 260-261.
44. See Idel, Ascensions on High, pp. 79-85. Elliot R. Wolfson's proposal in his Through a
Speculum, p. 259 n. 304, that the recurring pillar motif of this "school" is a phallic
symbol mistakenly imports kabbalistic sexual symbolism, found indeed in the Bahir's
treatment of the pillar, into a type of literature that does not operate with it.
45. See Idel, Ascensions on High, pp. 111-112; and chap. 7 in this volume.
•453-
Notes to Pages 320-322
46. Seeldel, "Some Forlorn Writings."
47. Ibid., pp. 194-196.
48. Ibid., pp. 192-193.
49. Although in some cases Penei ha-Geuurah implies some form of attenuating anthropo-
morphism, here, in my opinion, the situation is different. See also the quotation from
R. Eleazar of Worms in Sodei Razayya', discussed later in this appendix near note 53.
For other instances of anthropomorphism in some poems from the early Middle Ages
see now Lorberbaum, Image of God, pp. 327-330; and Shama Y. Friedman, "Tzelem,
Detnut, ve-Taunit," Sidra' 22 (2007), pp. 141-144 and the bibliography there.
50. Itis possible that the poet understood the term qelaster as pointing to a certain function
of the face — luminosity, for example — thus creating a parallel between the face and
the other limbs mentioned in this context together with their functions. In addition to
its occurrence in the Talmud, the expression qelaster panim occurs in Heikhalot mate-
rial. See Ra'anan Abusch, "R. Ishmael's Miraculous Conception," in The Ways That
Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Adam H.
Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 2003), pp. 307-343.
51. R. 'Amittai, Megillat Ahima'atz, p. 91.
52. See BT, Niddah, fol. 31a. For quotations of this statement see the anonymous kabbal-
istic Commentary on Prayers, ed. Adam Afterman (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2004),
p. 232; R. Eleazar of Worms, Commentary on the Torah, ed. Joel Klugmann, vol. 1 (Benei
Beraq, 1986), p. 82.
53. R Eleazar of Worms, Sodei Razayya', ed. Shalom Weiss (Sha'arei Ziv, Jerusalem,
i99i),p. 19.
54. On anthropomorphism in Hasidei Ashkenaz see Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 86-87;
Wolfson, Through a Speculum, pp. 192-195, 219, 230-232; and Moshe Idel, "Gazing at
the Head in Ashkenazi Hasidism," Journal 0/ Jewish Thought and Mysticism 6 (1997},
pp. 265-300. See also for earlier midrashic sources Shama Friedman, "Graven
Images," Grauen Images: AJournal of Culture, Law, and the Sacred 1 (1994), pp. 233-238.
Friedman's suggestion that Jacob's face on high represents the face of God, made in
the context of late-antique Jewish texts, is particularly important for my suggestion for
a more anthropomorphic reading of some aspects of Hasidei Ashkenaz's theology,
beyond what has been already done in modern scholarship.
55. See Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 4: 74-77.
56. See Idel, "The Forlorn Writings," pp. 192-193.
57. Azriel, Arugat ha-Bosem, 4: 81.
58. See especially R. Nehemiah's Sefer ha-Nauon, whose discussions of Shi'ur Qomah have
been printed and compared to the extant versions of this book by Martin S. Cohen, The
Shi'ur Qomah: Texts and Recensions (J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 1985), pp. 220-225.
59. On these terms see the material collected by Scholem, Major Trends, p. 366 n. 106; and
idem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition, 2nd ed. (Jewish
Theological Seminary of America, New York, 1965), pp. 43-44. See also Wolfson,
"Metatron," p. 80.
•454.
Notes to Page 322
60. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, Commentary on the Seuenty Names oJMetatron, in Epstein, Sefer
ha-Hesheq, para. 30, fol. 4b; and the version found in Ms. New York, JTS 2026, fol. 3b.
See also Abrams, "The Boundaries of Divine Ontology," p. 305. For an explicit rabbinic
denial that God has a son or a brother see Deuteronomy Rabba' 2:24. In R. Nehemiah's
commentary both the terms "son" and "brother" are attributed to Metatron.
61. See Idel, Ben, pp. 194-376.
62. On the brotherhood of God and Israel see also David Hoffmann, ed., Mekhilta' de-Rabbi
Simon b. Yohai (Frankfurt am Main, 1905), p. 48.
63. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, Commentary on the Seuenty Names oJMetatron, in Epstein, Sefer
ha-Hesheq, paras. 6, 11, and 49, fols. ia, 2b, and 69 respectively.
64. Cf. Scholem's assumption that the Heikhalot literature degenerated over time from an
experiential orientation into a magical one; Major Trends, pp. 54-78. The material
found in both Megillat 'Ahima'atz and R. 'Amittai's poems renders this view problem-
atic, just as it problematizes Schaefer's critique of Scholem's stand, in which he
similarly argues that the Heikhalot literature was basically magical. See Peter Schaefer,
"Gershom Scholem Reconsidered: The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism,"
in his Hekhalot-Studien (Mohr/Siebeck, Tubingen, 1988), pp. 277-295.
65. In some Ashkenazi sources the locution demut demut, "likeness, likeness," occurs in
connection with the theory of the divine glory; see, e.g., R. Eleazar's Hilkhot Kauod, in
Daniel Abrams, "Sod Icol ha-Sodot: The Concept of the Divine Glory and the Intention of
Prayer in the Writings of R. Eleazar of Worms," Da'at 34 (1995), p. 79 (Hebrew); and
Wolfson, "Metatron," pp. 66-67.
66. This view implies that one of the two likenesses belongs to the terrestrial man. On the
issue of demut in Hasidei Ashkenaz see Haym Soloveitchik, "Topics in the Holchmat
ha-Nefesh," Journal of Jewish Studies 18 (1967), pp. 75-78; Dan, The Esoteric Theology,
pp. 224-225.
67. The Hebrew is not quite clear here, and my translation is an approximation; in the
original it is written ka'asher iuhar be-'auodat ha-naui'.
68. This form is a reconstruction that I offer to the meaningless yeriymiahu — apparentiy
influenced by the occurrence of the term "prophet" beforehand — as found in print
and quoted by Dan, The Esoteric Theology, p. 223. Maybe it is a scribal error for yare'hu,
namely "He [God] has shown to him [namely to the prophet] ." However, the sequence
be-zohar keuodo fits the phrase yariymehu and not yare'hu. See also Psalm 112:9, Qomo
yarum be-kauod, which can be translated as "his horn will be exalted with glory." The
ascension of the prophet, which is signified by yariymehu, fits the discussion immedi-
ately preceding this quotation, where the two likenesses are described as pointing
respectively to the status of man and to Enoch's status as an angel, thus implying the
translation, and thus the ascension, of the patriarch. Dan, The Esoteric Theology, p. 223,
adduces the form Yermiyahu! Wolfson, Through a Speculum, p. 223, translates this pas-
sage, on the basis of several manuscripts, with the version of yare'hu as the correct
reading. See also M. Idel, "Additional Fragments from Joseph of Hamadan's
Writings," Da'at 21 (1988), p. 51 and n. 26 (Hebrew).
•455-
Notes to Pages 322-325
69. Nehemiah ben Shlomo, Commentary on the Seuenty Names of Metatron, Ms. New York,
JTS 1801, in Epstein, Sefer ha-Hesheq, para. 25, fol. 4a.
70. See Peter Schaefer, The Hidden and the Manifest God (SUNY Press, Albany, 1992),
pp. 165-166; Moshe Idel, "Enoch Is Metatron," Immanuel 24/25 (1990), p. 225 n. 18;
and Elliot R. Wolfson, "Yeridah Ia-Merkauah: Typology of Ecstasy and Enthronement
in Ancient Jewish Mysticism," in Mystics ojthe Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies, ed.
R. A. Herrera (Peter Lang, New York, 1993), pp. 13-44.
71. See Pieter Willem van der Horst, "Moses' Throne Vision in Ezekiel the Dramatist," Journal
of Jewish Studies 34 (1983), pp. 21-29; Geo Widengren, "Heavenly Enthronement and
Baptism: Studies in Mandaean Baptism," in Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Honor of Erivin
Ramsdell Goodenough, ed. Jacob Neusner (Brill, Leiden, 1968), pp. 551-582; idem, "Baptism
and Enthronement in Some Jewish-Christian Gnostic Documents," in The Sauiour God,
ed. S. G. F. Brandon (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1963), pp. 205-217.
72. See Eleazar of Worms, Sodei Razayya', p. 135. A process of angelification is described
on p. 138. See also Moshe Idel, "Adam and Enoch According to St. Ephrem the Syrian,"
Kabbalah 6 (2001), pp. 183-205.
73. See R. Eleazar's Hokhmat ha-Nefesh (Benei Beraq, 1987), p. 23, stating that when God
wants to elevate the soul to the throne of Glory, "He shows here the splendor of His
Glory." For additional examples of ascent by means of a ray that elevates the soul to
the upper world in early Catalan Kabbalah see Moshe Idel, "In the Light of Life," in
Qeddushat ha-Hayyim, ed. Y. Gafni and A. Ravitzky (Merkaz Zalman Shazar, Jerusalem,
1992), pp. 209-211 (Hebrew). Those and other affinities notwithstanding, it is advis-
able to distinguish carefully between their views, and not attempt to attribute the
views of one school to those found in another. For further differences between these
two Ashkenazi schools see Idel, Ben, pp. 194-275.
74. As Scholem perceptively pointed out in the context of the Heikhalot literature, Major
Trends, p. 79.
Appendix 2: The Infant Experiment
1. On this issue see Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: The Neiu Science of Language and
Mind (Penguin, London, 1994), pp. 231-261; George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of
Language and Translation (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1975), p. 474.
2. See the rabbinic references on this issue collected by Louis Ginzberg, Legends ojthe
Jews, vol. 5 (Philadelphia, JPS, 1968), pp. 205-206 n. 91.
3. See Nehemiah Alony, "The Kuzari — An Anti-Arabiyyeh Polemic," in 'Eshel Beer Sheua':
Studies in Jewish Thought, vol. 3, ed. G. Blidstein, R. Bonfil, and Y. Salmon (Ben Gurion
University Press, Beer Sheva, 1981), pp. 113-114 (Hebrew); and Yochanan Silman,
Thinker and Seer: The Development ojthe Thought oJR. Yehudah Haleui in the Kuzari (Bar-Ilan
University Press, Ramat Gan, 1985), pp. 86-89 (Hebrew). For more on ha-Levi's view
of language see Wilhelm Bacher, "The Views of Jehuda Halevi Concerning the Hebrew
Language," Hebraica 8 (1892), pp. 136-149.
•456-
Notes to Pages 325-329
4. See Cronka Fratris Salimbene, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, vol. 32 (Hannover,
igi2),p. 350.
5. On this figure see the articles in Isadore Twersky and Jay M.Harris, eds., Rabbi Abraham
Ibn Ezra: Studies in the Writings of a Twelfth-Century Jewish Polymath (Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993).
6. According to one scholar, it was written in Rome in 1174; according to another, it was
composed after his visit there, while the author was in France. See Zeev Bacher, Rabbi
Abraham ibn Ezra, the Grammarian, trans. A. Z. Rabinovitch (1931; reprint, Jerusalem,
1970), pp. 24-25 (Hebrew). Thus Ibn Ezra visited Italy more than a century before
Abraham Abulafia's studies there.
7. Ro'shah may also be translated as "principal language."
8. This view apparently influenced Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim; see Steiner, After
Babel, p. 62.
9. R. Abraham ibn Ezra, Sajah Berurah, ed. Michael Vilensky, Devir 2 (1924), p. 286.
10. Ibid.
n. Ibid.
12. See BT, Sanhedrin, fol. 38b; ibid., fol. 21b; Maurice Olender, The Languages qfParadise,
trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1992),
pp. 1, 12.
13. On the identity of the natures see later in the discussion.
14. Gimgum. Another possible translation would be "babble. "
15. Quoted by R. Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen in his response to R. Hillel, printed in 'Otzar
Nehmad, ed. Raphael Kircheim, vol. 2 (1857; reprint, Jerusalem, 1967), p. 135. On the
polemic about language between the two thinkers see the very important, though
hardly accessible, discussion of Giuseppe Sermoneta, "R. Hillel ben Shmuel ben
Eleazar of Verona and His Philosophical Thought" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University,
Jerusalem, 1961), pp. 167-184 (Hebrew). See also the more general survey of Isaac E.
Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith: Anti-Rationalism in Jewish Italian Thought, 1250-1650
(Mouton, The Hague, 1967), pp. 33-57; andEco, The Search Jor the Perfect Language.
16. Sermoneta, "Hillel of Verona and His Philosophical Thought," pp. 168-169.
17. R. Zerahyah Hen, in Kircheim, 'Otzar Nehmad, 2: 136.
18. Idel, Hasidism, pp. 45-145; and idem, "Reification of Language in Jewish Mysticism," in
Mysticism and Language, ed. S. Katz (Oxford University Press, New York, 1992), pp. 42-79.
19. On these issues see Gershom Scholem, "The Name of God and the Linguistic of the
Kabbala," Diogenes 79 (1972), pp. 59-80; ibid., 80, pp. 164-194; Idel, Language, Torah,
and Hermeneutics; and idem, The Mystical Experience.
20. See his claim in Abulafia, Ve-Zot Li-Yhudah, p. 18.
21. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Majteah ha-Re'ayon, Ms. Vatican 291, fols. 2gb-3oa.
22. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer ha-Melammed, Ms. Paris, BN 680, fol. 296a. For bibliographical
details on this book see Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," pp. 15-17.
23. See note 41 below.
•457-
Notes to Pages 330-333
24. On the affinity between language and geographical environment see Idel, Language,
Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 154 n. 99.
25. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer 'Or ha-Sekhel, Ms. Berlin, Or. 538, fols. I5b-i6a; Ms. Vatican
233, fols. na-b.
26. Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Hayyei ha-Nefesh, Ms. Munich 408, fols. gia-b.
27. On the various versions of Aristotle's concept in Arabo-Judaic philosophies see
Herbert Davidson's studies printed in Viator 3 (1972), 17 (1986), 18 (1987), andREJ 131
(1972), pp. 351-396.
28. See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 187 n. 240.
29. Abulafia, Sefer 'Or ha-Sekhel, Ms. Berlin, Or. 538, fol. 14b; Ms. Vatican 233, fol. 10b.
30. Ibid., fol. 15b.
31. See Abulafia, Ve-Zot Li-Yhudah, p. 16.
32. Idel, The Mystical Experience, pp. 55, 65 n. 14, 84, 149 n. 52.
33. On the term tziyyur as forming a concept see H. A. Wolfson, "The Terms Tasawwur and
Tasdiq in Arabic Philosophy and Their Greek, Latin and Hebrew Equivalents," Moslem
World, April 1943, pp. 1-15.
34. Abulafia, Sefer Hayyei ha-Nefesh, Ms. Munich 408, fols. 9ia-b.
35. This is how it appears in the manuscript; apparently the word me'uleh, "of highest
quality," or some approximation of such a word, is missing. On the concept that the
first language included all other languages, see R. Arnaldes's analysis of the opinion
of the eleventh-century thinker and linguist from Cordoba, Abu Muhammad Ali ibn
Hazm, Grammaire et the'ologie chez Ibn Hazm deCordoue (Paris, 1956), p. 46.
36. On this issue see Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 3-8.
37. Namely the five main vowels according to the medieval Hebrew grammar as
influenced by Arabic linguistics.
38. QDVSh (qadosh = holy) = 410, like the morpheme ThYin an elliptical spelling of theos,
"divine," in Greek.
3g. In Italian, santo means "holy," whence we deduce that the word La'az means (in the
context of Abulafia's usage) "Italian."
40. Abraham Abulafia, Hayyei ha-'Olam ha-Ba', Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1582, fol. 105b.
41. Abulafia, Sheua' Netiuot ha-Torah, p. 8; Idel, "Abraham Abulafia," pp. 86-87, 9 2_ 93> 9^>
98-99, 103. On the possible importance of the unique status of language as a form of
cognition higher than imagination for later developments in the description of man as
having the form of speech, as in Dante, see Eco, The Search/or the Perfect Language, pp. 46-52.
42. Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 16-27. Abulafia quotes a passage from
Averroes' Commentary on Aristotle's De Interpretatione, as translated by lacob Anatoli in Italy
toward the end of the first half of the thirteenth century, to make his point. See Abulafia,
Sheua' Netiuot ha-Torah, pp. 16-17. This is why I see a much more Aristotelian orientation
in Abulafia in matters of language than in any theosophical Kabbalists I know of. None
of the latter quoted Aristode or Averroes even in order to argue against them. Their
approach to Hebrew was based upon the written aspects of Hebrew, which are imag-
•458-
Notes to Pages 333-336
ined to represent divine powers in their external form. See, e.g., the Commentaries on the
Alphabet printed in Moshe Idel, "R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid and His Commentaries
on the Alphabet," Alei Sefer 9 (1981), pp. 84-98 (Hebrew); as well as in the anonymous
Sefer ha-Temunah. See, however, Wolfson's effort to reconcile the two different attitudes
toward language in Language, Eros, Beinc|, p. 204. It is worth remembering that Abulafia
was more critical of the infant experiment than was Hillel, an Aristotelian. The theo-
sophical Kabbalists, either in Spain or in the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries in Italy,
never referred to this experiment, and I suspect that if they had, their approach would
have been closer to Hillel's and quite critical of Abulafia's naturalistic approach.
43. On this Kabbalist see Isaiah Tishby, Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches (Magnes Press,
Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 177-254 (Hebrew).
44. See Idel, Hasidism, pp. 45-145; and idem, "The Talismanic Language in Jewish
Mysticism," Diogenes 43, no. 2 (1995), pp. 23-41.
45. R. Aharon Berakhiah of Modena, Sefer Ma'auar Yaboq (Vilnius, 1896), fol. 124a. For the
various midrashic and medieval sources of this view see Idel, Language, Torah, and
Hermeneutics, pp. 29-32.
46. On this concept see Pines, "On the Term Ruhaniuyut," as well as his "Shi'ite Terms
and Conceptions in Judah Halevi's Kuzari," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 2 (1980),
pp. 165-251; and Idel, Hasidism.
47. Aharon Berakhiah, Sefer Ma'auar Yaboq, fol. 123b.
48. Ibid.
49. See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, pp. 29-32.
50. Cf. M. Idel, "Deus siue natura: Les metamorphoses d'une formule de Maimonide a
Spinoza," in Maimonide et la mystiquejuiue, pp. 105-135.
51. Allison Coudert, "Some Theories of a Natural Language from the Renaissance to the
SeventeenthCentury/'inMa^iaNaturalisunddieEntstehun^desmodernenNaturuiissenschajten:
Studia Leibnitiana, vol. 7 (Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1978), pp. 56-118.
52. Aharon Berakhiah, Sefer Ma'auar Yaboq, fol. 123b.
53. The lowest in the kabbalistic hierarchy often sefirot.
54. Aharon Berakhiah, Sefer Ma'auar Yaboq, fol. 102b. This text is heavily influenced by
R. Moshe Cordovero's commentary on the prayerbook, Tejillah le-Moshe (Premislany,
1892), fol. 4a. On the content of the latter see Idel, Hasidism, p. 71. Compare also the
view concerning the berakhah, namely the blessing, as presented in R. Meir ibn Gabbai,
'Auodat ha-Qodesh (Jerusalem, 1983), fol. 39c; and R. Isaiah Horowitz, ha-Shelah, vol. 1
(Jerusalem, 1969), fol. 22b.
55. For more on Berakhiah's thought see Idel, Hasidism, p. 71.
56. Probably the biblical figure who was a king of Aram; see, for example, 1 Kings 20:1. 1
have not found an additional connection between this king and the issue of language.
57. See also above, note 7.
58. Printed in Hayyim Liebermann, 'Ohel Rahel, vol. 1 (privately printed, New York, 1980),
pp. 319-320 (Hebrew).
•459-
Notes to Pages 337-342
59. See Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 25.
60. Cf. Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, pp. 48-52.
61. See Shlomo Pines, "Medieval Doctrines in Renaissance Garb?: Some Jewish and
Arabic Sources of Leone Ebreo's Doctrines," in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century,
ed. B. D. Cooperman (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1983), p. 390.
62. On this important point for understanding the general ambiance of Italian Kabbalah, see
the general remarks of David B. Ruderman, "At the Intersection of Cultures : The Historical
Legacy of Italian Jewry," in Gardens and Ghettos: The Art afjeimsh Life in Italy, ed. Vivian Mann
(University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989), pp. 1-23; and Giuseppe Sermoneta,
"L'incontro culturale tra ebrei e cristiani nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento," in Ebrei e cris-
tiani nell'Italia medieuale e moderna: Atti del W Congresso internazionale dell'AISG, ed. Michele
Luzzati, Michele Olivari, and Alessandra Veronese (Carruci, Rome, 1988), pp. 183-207.
63. Yehudah Rosenthal, Mehqarim u-Megorot, vol. 1 (Reuven Mass Editing House,
Jerusalem, 1967), p. 217 n. 13 (Hebrew), stated that the English king James II was
credited with an experiment similar to that of Frederick II, but he did not provide a
precise source for this claim.
Appendix 3: R. Yohanan Alemanncs Study Program
1. See Idel, "The Study Program," offering a more detailed discussion of the identity of
these books and an analysis of the structure and content of this list in relation to
Alemanno's other writings. Here I present only what seems to me to be essential or
updated information.
2. See P. Kibre, The Library of Pico della Mirandola (Columbia University Press, New York,
1936).
3. Hatzlahah 'enoshit is an approximation of eudaimonia. Elsewhere Alemanno uses a term
more common in the Middle Ages, Hatzlahah 'aharonah. See Idel, "The Study Program,"
p. 319. On these terms in Alemanno and his more general views on the topic see Hava
Tirosh-Samuelson, Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being
(Hebrew Union College Press, Cincinnati, 2003), pp. 412-423.
4. R. Asher ben Yehi'el, known as ha-Rosh.
5 . Namely the book by Profiat Duran, an early- fifteenth-century Provengal Jewish thinker.
6. Yehudah Messer Leon was the teacher of Alemanno and wrote a book on biblical
rhetoric titled NojetTzufim.
7. Here and elsewhere in the curriculum Alemanno uses an Italian word, pratichi or
pratica.
8. Plausibly, we have here a recommendation to study also foreign languages and the
rhetoric related to them.
9. Moritz Steinschneider, Die Hebrdischen Ubersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als
Dolmetscher (1893; reprint, Graz, 1954), p. 523.
10. Alemanno refers to an abridgment of the Almagest done by Averroes.
11. This a book by the twelfth-century Barcelonan Abraham bar Hiyya, whose full title is
Tzurat ha- Aretz ve-Tavnit ha-Shamayyim.
•460-
Notes to Page 342
12. Presumably this is the Hebrew translation titled Sejer Yesodot ha-tekhunah, namely
Elements of Astronomy. See Steinschneider, Die Hebrdischen Ubersetzungen des Mittelalters,
P-555-
13 . Again a book by Profiat Duran.
14. This is the book by the fourteenth-century Toledan astronomer R. Isaac ben Joseph
Israeli.
15 . Namely the book by R. Abraham bar Hiyya.
16. In fact this is a book by R. Shem Tov Falaquera. See Steinschneider, Die Hebrdischen
Ubersetzungen des Mittelalters, pp. 5-9. The same mistake occurs in the catalogue of
Pico's library. See Kibre, The Library, p. 241, no. 295, and p. 43: Opiniones philosophorum
Rabi Samuelis. See also Wirszubski, Sermo de Passione Domini, p. 62 n. 2.
17. Presumably this is his book Me'oznei Tzedeq, The Scale of Justice, which was well known
to many medieval Jewish authors and was quoted by Alemmano many times.
18. Presumably Ibn Gabirol's book Tiqqun Middot ha-Nefesh. For the occurrence of this
book together with the previous one see Idel, "The Study Program," p. 307 n. 34.
19. See The Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction until the Actiue Intellect by Ibn Rushd urith the
Commentary of Moses Narboni, ed. KalmanP. Bland (JTS, New York, 1982).
20. I assume that this is Abu-Bakr ibn Tufayl's Hayy bin Yoqtan, a book much revered
by Alemanno, who taught it to Pico della Mirandola, and also quoted by Marsilio
Ficino. On Alemanno's view on this topic see Georges Vajda, L'amour de Dieu
dans la the'ologie juiue du Moyen Age (J. Vrin, Paris, 1957), pp. 280-285; M. Idel, "The
Sources of the Circle Images in Dialoghi dAmore," 'Iyyun 28 (1978), pp. 162-166
(Hebrew).
21. Tzori ha-Guf, a book by R. Nathan ben Yo'el Falaquera, found still in manuscript.
22. This is an Arabic book translated into Hebrew, which was in Pico's library. See
Steinschneider, Die Hebrdischen Ubersetzungen des Mittelalters, pp. 702-704; and Kibre,
The Library, p. 47: Viaticum peregrinatum.
23. As the late Arieh L. Motzkin let me know in a letter in 1981, this is the book attributed
to the Dioscourides, translated as The Greek Herbal, which was very widespread in the
Renaissance.
24. On Alemanno and alchemy see Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 307-308 n. 43.
25. See Martin Plessner, Vorsokratische Philosophie und griechische Alchemic (Steiner,
Wiesbaden, 1975).
26. This may be again a book attributed to the Dioscourides.
27. By Al-Ghazzali.
28. Tiqqun ha-De'ot. On this book see Georges Vajda, Isaac Albalag (J. Vrin, Paris, i960).
29. AJ-Ghazali's book.
30. By R. Yehudah ha-Levi.
31. By the twelfth-century Spanish thinker Abraham ben Dawd.
32. Presumably Joseph Kaspi.
33. Namely Moreh ha-Moreh. Cf. Kibre, The Library, no. 532, p. 190, where the term
Auphalachera is mistakenly interpreted as referring to Abulafia.
•461-
Notes to Pages 342-343
34. By R. Hasdai Crescas. This book had an impact on Giovanni Pico's nephew. See Harry
A. Wolfson, Crescas' Critique of Aristotle (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
1929), p. 749.
35. By Joseph Albo, an early-fifteenth-century thinker.
36. Maybe it is, again, R. Shem Tov Falaquera, whose books were quoted by Alemanno in
various instances in his own works.
37. On the margin of this page Alemanno added "and the books of Leuccio di Ser Daniel,"
which is, as the late Professor Giuseppe Sermonetta told me, the name of R. Yehudah
Romano.
38. The book by the controversial Jewish thinker R. Levi ben Abraham from Villefranche.
See Colette Sirat, "Les differentes versions du Liiuyat Hen de Levi ben Abraham," REJ
122 (1963), pp. 167-177; and Warren Zev Harvey, "Levi Ben Abraham of Villefranche's
Controversial Encyclopedia," in The Medieual Hebrew Encyclopedia oJScience and Philosophy,
ed. S. Harvey (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2000), pp. 171-188.
39. The Hebrew phrase is Shorshei ha-Qabbalah, and it recurs also in other contexts. See
also above, chap. 20, note 60.
40. See chap. 18, sec. 3.
41. The identity of this book eludes me.
42. The identity of this figure is not clear to me.
43. R Isaac ben Abraham ibn Latif, a mid-thirteenth-century thinker active in Spain, had an
impact on both Alemanno and Pico. See M. Idel, "The Throne and the Seven-Branched
Candlestick: Pico della Mirandola's Hebrew Source," JWCI 40 (1977), pp. 290-292; and
idem, "The Study Program," pp. 309-310 n. 64. On his writings see Heller Wilensky,
"Isaac ibn Latif — Philosopher or Kabbalist?" See also above, chap. 18, note 5.
44. This is a kabbalistic book emanating from Nahmanides' school, written in the early
fourteenth century, presumably in Barcelona, and well known in Italy, where it was
the subject of several commentaries. See chap. 18.
45. For a list of the commentaries on this book known to Alemanno see Idel, "The Study
Program," p. 310 n. 67. Those commentaries mark the transition from theosophic-
theurgic Kabbalah to the ecstatic form.
46. Abulafia's ecstatic Kabbalah is therefore situated at the top of kabbalistic studies,
higher than the books dealing with theosophic-theurgic Kabbalah. On the list of this
Kabbalist's books that were used by Alemanno see Idel, "The Study Program,"
pp. 310-311 n. 68. On the high rank of Abulafia's Kabbalah based on combinations of
letters and the affinity to the spiritual, namely occult, sciences, see ibid., pp. 319-321.
47. Hokhmat ha-ruhaniyyut or Hokhmah ruhaniyt, which in this context means the science of
magic. On the history of this term see Pines, "On the Term Ruhaniyyut."
48. Mel'elchet ha-Muskkelet. On this book see Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 311 n. 70 and
320; and chap. 16, sec. 2, in this volume.
49. See chap. 16, sec. 2; and chap. 16, note 37.
50. See Idel, "The Study Program," p. 312 n. 73. The work by Plato — perhaps titled
Mechanics — has not survived.
•462-
Notes to Pages 343-345
51. See Gershom Scholem's edition of the Hebrew translation and a German translation,
Sefer ha-Tamar: Das Buch von der Palme des Abu Ajlah a us Syracus (Jerusalem, 1926-27); and
Shlomo Pines, "Le Sefer ha-Tamar et les Macjcjidim des Kabbalists," in Hommacje a Georges
Vajda, ed. G. Nahon and C. Touati (Peeters, Louvain, 1980), pp. 333-363. See now
Reimund Leicht, Astroloc|umena Judaica (Mohr/Siebeck, Tubingen, 2007), pp. 306-308.
52. See Idel, "The Study Program," p. 312 n. 75; and now the contemporary use of the
term tahbbuli to refer to some form of mechanics used to create an artificial anthro-
poid, in the manuscript of R. Moses ben Yehudah Galeano, an author active in the
Ottoman Empire. See Y. Tzvi Langerman, "'From My Notebooks': Medicine,
Mechanics, and Magic from Moses ben Judah Galeano's Ta'alumot Hokhmah," Aleph:
Historical Studies in Science & Judaism 9 (2009), pp. 366-370.
53. This is a widely influential magical book attributed to R. Abraham ibn Ezra.
54. This is a Renaissance work found also in Pico's library. See Kibre, The Library, pp. no,
127, no. 802. See H. Nais, "Le Rustican — Notes sur la traduction francaise du Traite'
d'atjriculture de Pierre de Crescensiis," Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance 19 (1957),
pp. 103-132. On the significance of the presence of this book at the top of Alemanno's
listsee Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 322-328, including some parallels to Pico della
Mirandola's understanding of magic. See also chap. 20 in this volume on the Nabbatean
Agriculture, a tide known in the Middle Ages but rarely cited.
Appendix 4: Magic Temples and Cities in the
Middle Ages and Renaissance
1. Yates, Giordano Bruno, pp. 54 ff, 367 ff.
2. Ibid., pp. 370-372. In the second half of the sixteenth century there were some links
between architecture and Hermetic elements; see Rene Taylor, "Architecture and
Magic," in Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wirtkoiver, ed. Douglas
Fraser, Howard Hibberd, and Milton J. Lewine (Phaidon Press, London, 1967),
pp. 81-109.
3. The Latin translation, which was known in the Renaissance, has been edited by
Vittoria Perrone Compagni, "Picatrix Latinus: Concezione filosofico-religiosa e prassi
magica," Medioevo: Riuista di storia della jfilosojia medieuale 1 (1975), pp. 334-337.
4. For the Sabean background and parallels to the passages, see Henry Corbin, "Rituel
sabeen et exegese ismaelienne du rituel," Eranos Jahrbuch 19 (1951), pp. 182 ff. A
Kabbalist of the mid-seventeenth century, probably writing in Poland, recognized the
Sabean character of Alemanno's passage. See R. Samuel ben Benjamin, Devarim
Atiqim, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1563, fol. 295b.
5. In Ibn Zarza's passage the phrase is "in ancient time" — bi-zeman qadum.
6. In Hebrew Zin; this spelling follows the Arabic.
7. In Hebrew tzurah. The Hebrew term means also "talisman"; seeMoritz Steinschneider,
Die Hebrdischen Ubersetzumjen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (1893; reprint,
Graz, 1954), p. 846 n. 8.
•463-
Notes to Pages 345-348
8. The list of correspondences between colors and planets did not occur in Mas'udi's
text, but it is found in Ibn Zarza's passage, and it has a quite impressive parallel to the
Hebrew version of an Arabic magical text attributed to Abu Aflah al-Syracusi, titled 'Em
ha-Melekh (The Mother of the King), published by Gershom Scholem as an appendix to
Sefer ha-Tamar: Das Buch uon der Palme des Abu Aflah aus Syracus (Jerusalem, 1927), p. 41.
Scholem noted (p. 41 n. 1) that the sources of 'Em ha-Melekh are the Risalas oflkhwan
al-SaJa.
9. On the forms of the stars, see Moritz Steinschneider, Zur Pseudepujraphischen I.iteratur
(Berlin, 1862), pp. 29-30.
10. In Hebrew nitzotzot. The term nitzotz occurs several times in the Book ojthe Palm, and its
meaning is "emanation." See, e.g., p. 13 of Scholem's appendix to Sejer ha-Tamar.
11. From the beginning of the passage until here Alemanno quotes, without attribution,
from R. Shmuel ibn Zarza's Meqor Hayyim, published in abridged form in Marqaliyyot
Touah (Ivano-Frankovsk, 1927), fol. 77b. Thus there can be no doubt that Ibn Zarza
mediated the passage between an Arabic source, close in its formulation to though
not totally identical with Mas'udi, to Alemanno in Florence.
12. R. Yohanan Alemanno, Sha'ar ha-Hesheq (Halberstadt, i860), fol. 26a-b.
13. In Hebrew hashqajdh pit'omit, a concept that seems to be influenced by Abu Bakr ibn
Tufayl's Hayy bin Yoqtan. See, e.g., Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1337, fol. 102b.
14. Alemanno, Sha'ar ha-Hesheq, fol. 34b; idem, Sefer Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana
1535, fols. io6a-b.
15. Alemanno understood agriculture as a high form of magic. See the material collected
to this effect in Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 324-328, where I have shown that
there is a parallel emphasis on the high status of agriculture in the writings of both
Jewish and Christian thinkers in the Florentine Renaissance.
16. tzurot, namely talismans. See note 7 above.
17. On this term as close to magic see Idel, "The Study Program," pp. 311-312 and
320 n. 73.
18. Alemanno, Sha'ar ha-Hesheq, fol. 34b.
19. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1963), pp. 516-517. See also Howard Kreisel, "Veridical Dreams and
Prophecy in the Philosophy of Gersonides," Da'at 22 (1989), p. 80 (Hebrew).
20. On this version see David Flusser's introduction to Josippon: The Original Version,
Ms. Jerusalem 8 41280 and Supplements (Merkaz Dinur, Jerusalem, 1978), p. 6. The Venice
edition is the second, the first being Constantinople 1510.
21. In Hebrew medinah, but its meaning seems to be, according to the Arabic madinah,
"city." On the same page we read: "we went to one medinah in India, and it is found
amidst a river . . . and the foundations of the medinah are on canes"; here it is evident
that the topic is a city not a country.
22. I use here The Book of Josiphon (Hominer, Jerusalem, 1967), p. 52. Part of this passage
was appropriated by the anonymous author of The Book oJYashar (Herts, Berlin, 1923).
For another opinion about the source of the Book ofYashar's passage on Keinan the son
•464-
Notes to Page 348
of Enos, see Levi Ginzburg, "The Flood of Fire," in his A! Halakhah ve-Aggadah (Devir,
Tel Aviv, i960), pp. 208-209 (Hebrew). See also Yoseph Dan, "When Was the Book
ofYashar Composed?," in Sepher Dov Sdan, ed. N. Rotenstreich, S. Werses, and Ch.
Shmeruk (ha-Kibbutz hameuhad, Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 105-110 (Hebrew). According
to Dan, the book was written during the Renaissance. In the passage on Keinan as it
appears in The Book ofYashar, and whose source is Josiphon, there are two variants that
appear also in Isaac Abravanel's quotation from Josiphon in his Commentary on Genesis
(Warsaw, 1862), fol. 27a. Dan's suggestion that the author of The Book ofYashar lived in
Naples may be strengthened by the fact that Isaac Abravanel lived in Naples at the time
when this book was supposedly written.
23. R. Abraham Yagel, Beit Ya'ar ha-Leuanon, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1304, fol. 9b. Yagel
wrote his encyclopedia at the beginning of the seventeenth century and was strongly
influenced by Alemanno's views. On this figure see Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and
Science; idem, A Valley of Vision: The Heauenly Journey of Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel
(University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1990).
24. Quoted from Documenti della Vita di Giordano Bruno, ed. Vincenzo Spampanato (Florence,
1933), p. 44, in Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 233. She did not identify the "Duke of
Florence."
25. Cosimo ruled Florence from 1539 to 1564. There may be a connection between the
building of the City of the Sun in that period and the printing of Copernicus's works
from 1543 on. For the connection between Copernicus and Florentine Neoplatonism,
which stressed the importance of the sun, see Yates, Giordano Bruno, pp. 151-155.
26. One of the five available manuscripts of the Latin Picatrix was copied in Florence in
1536; see Compagni, "Picatrix Latinus," pp. 279-280. Alemanno himself seems to
have known one of the Medicis; in his commentary on the Song of Songs, Hesheq
Shlomo, Ms. Oxford, Bodleiana 1535, he praises Lorenzo de' Medici. See the passage
printed by Joseph Perles, "Les savants juifs a Florence a l'epoque de Laurent de
Medicis," RFJ 12 (1886), pp. 246-253.
•465-
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Aharon Jellinek, ed., Beth ha-Midrasch, 6 vols.
(Sifrei Vahrman, Jerusalem, 1967)
Jewish Theological Seminary of America,
New York
Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes
Efraim Kupfer, "The Visions of the Rabbi
Asher ben Rav Meir Also Called Lemlin
Reutlingen," Qouetz 'A! Yad 8 (1976),
pp. 387-423 (Hebrew)
Elijjah Hayyim ben Binyamin da Genazzano,
La lettera preziosa, ed. Fabrizio Lelli
(Giuntina, Florence, 2002)
Yehuda Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, trans. A.
Schwartz, S. Nakache, and P. Peli (SUNY
Press, Albany, 1993)
Yair Lorberbaum, Image of God: Halakhah and
Acjcjadah (Schocken, Tel Aviv, 2004)
(Hebrew)
Shlomo Pines, "On the Term Ruhaniuyut and
Its Sources and the Doctrine of Yehudah
ha-Levi," Tarbitz 57 (1988), pp. 511-530
(Hebrew)
•472-
Bibliography
Ravitzky, History and Faith
Recanati, Commentary on
theTorah
R£J
Reuchlin, On the Art ojthe Kabbalah
Ruderman, Kabbalah,
Magic, and Science
Scholem, Kabbalah
Scholem, Major Trends
Scholem, On the Kabbalah
Scholem, Origins ojthe Kabbalah
Scholem, Reshit ha-Qabbalah
Scholem, Sabbatai Seui
Sefer ha-Peliy'ah
Ta'amei ha-Mitzwot
Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds
Aviezer Ravitzky, History and Faith: Studies in
Jewish Philosophy (J. C. Gieben,
Amsterdam, 1996)
R. Menahem Recanati, Commentary on the
Torah ('Atiyah, Jerusalem, 1961)
Reuue des e'tudes juives
Johann Reuchlin, On the Art ojthe Kabbalah,
trans. M. Goodman and S. Goodman
(University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln,
1993)
David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and
Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-
Century Jewish Physician (Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1989)
Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (Keter
Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1974)
Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish
Mysticism (Schocken, New York, 1967)
Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its
Symbolism, trans. R. Manheim (Schocken,
New York, 1969)
Gershom G. Scholem, Origins ojthe Kabbalah,
ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, trans. A.
Arkush (JPS and Princeton University
Press, Princeton, 1987)
Gershom Scholem, Reshit ha-Qabbalah
(Schocken, Jerusalem, 1948)
Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Seui, the Mystical
Messiah, trans. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky
(Princeton University Press, Princeton,
1973)
Anon., Sefer ha-Peliy'ah (Premizlany, 1884),
two parts
R. Menahem Recanati, Commentary on the
Rationales Jor the Commandments, ed.
S. H. Liebermann (London, 1962)
Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds: The
Life and Thought oJRabbi David ben Judah
Messer Leon (SUNY Press, Albany, 1991)
•473-
Bibliography
Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar
Trinkaus, In Our Likeness and Image
Walker, Spiritual and
Demonic Magic
Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance
Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola
Wirszubski, Sermo de
Passione Domini
Wolfson, Abraham Abulajia
Wolfson, language,
Eros, Being
Wolfson, "Metatron"
Wolfson, Through a
Speculum
Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom ojthe Zohar: An
Anthology oJTexts, trans. David Goldstein,
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Charles Trinkaus, In Our Likeness and Image:
Humanity and Diuinity in Italian Humanist
Thought, 2 vols. (University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1970)
Daniel P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic:
From Ficino to Campanella (Warburg
Institute, London, 1958)
Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance
(Farber & Farber, Harmondsworth, 1967)
Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's
Encounter ivith Jeurish Mysticism (Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
1989)
Chaim Wirszubski, ed., Flauius Mithridates,
Sermo de Passione Domini (Israel Academy
of Sciences and Humanities,
Jerusalem, 1963)
Elliot R. Wolfson, Abraham Abulajia:
Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy
(Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2000)
Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being:
Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic
Imagination (Fordham University Press,
New York, 2005)
Elliot R. Wolfson, "Metatron and Shi'ur
Qomah in the Writings of Haside
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Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Judaism, ed. KarlE.
Groezinger and Joseph Dan (Walter de
Gruyter, Berlin, 1995), pp. 60-92
Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That
Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval
Jeuiish Mysticism (Princeton University
Press, Princeton, 1995)
•474-
Bibliography
Yates, Giordano Bruno Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the
Hermetic Tradition (University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1979)
Yates, The Occult Philosophy Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the
Elizabethan Age (Rxmtledge & Kegan Paul,
London, 1979)
•475-
INDEX OF MANUSCRIPTS
Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek
Ms. Or. 538, 4581125
Ms. Or. 942, 4521127, 4531139
Ms. Or.Qu. 832, 401111113,28
Budapest, Library of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences
Ms. Kaufmann, 246, 272,
433nn22,2 5
Cambridge, University Library
Ms. Add. 647, 239, 42inio, 422n28
Ms. Add. 651/7, 4i4n33
Ms. Genizah Taylor-Schechter K 12/4,
423 n 4 2
Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana
Ms. Gaddi 155, 435^2
Ms. Plut. 1 44, 4o8n9
Ms. Plut. II 35, 40on5
Ms. Plut. II 48, 366n30, 367nn45,5i,
372nn36, 39,44, 373n 5 g
Hamburg, Staats- und Universitats
Bibliothek
Ms. Levi 151, 422n28
•477-
Index of Manuscripts
Jerusalem, National and
University Library
Ms. 4 6246, 452^9
Ms. 8° 41280, 464n20
Jerusalem, Private Collection
Ms. Fischel, 425n73, 426n82
Leipzig, Universitatsbibliothek
Ms. 39, 366n27
London, British Library
Ms. 749, 365ns
Ms. 752, 377nn66,7i
Ms. 756,91, 93,95,97,3751145
Ms. 27034, 4i4n26
Ms. Or 9861, 206
Ms. Or 13136, 389^2
London, Montefiore
Ms. 431, 272, 275, 433nn2i,22,25
London, Sassoon Collection
Ms 56, 365n7, 372^1
Ms. gig, 423n42
Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana
Ms. 52 P. 12, catalogue no. 53, 97,
98, 422ni6
Moscow, Rossiskaya Gosudarstwennaya
Biblioteka
Ms. Guensburgi33, 363n30, 368n8
Ms. Guensburg 140, 402^6, 4ogn2i,
4 I 7 n 35> 4i8n39, 426ngo
Ms. Guensburg 607, 3g2ni3, 436n62
Ms. Guensburg 775, 423n46;n50
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
Ms. 10, 387^, 38gnn29,35, 422n2g
Ms. 22,388m8
Ms. 43, 36on5, 362ni5
Ms. 207, g6, 97, 98
Ms. 214, 206, 272, 274-275, 402n24,
432M5, 433nn25,26
Ms. 285, 36gnn2i,23, 37on8, 37in27,
372n47, 40ini2
Ms. 341, 422n28
Ms. 408, 366n28, 372nn46, 56, 458n34
New York, Jewish Theological Seminary
ofAmerica
Ms. 839,388m8
Ms. 843, 372n4i
Ms. 1777, 427ni02
Ms. 1801, 365ns, 456n69
Ms. 1805, 378n82
Ms. 1887, 37in3i
Ms. 2026, 453n3i, 455n6o
Ms. 2465, 206
Ms. 2470, 206
Ms. 8117, 207, 208, 4ion42
Ms. 8124, 94, g5
Oxford, Bodleian Library
Ms. 123, 3g3n26
Ms. 836, 150, 3gon63, 3gin73
Ms. 1337, 464ni3
Ms. 1352, 207
Ms. 1535, 40in20, 402nn33,43,
404n66, 442114, 444n2g, 464M4,
465n26
Ms. 1557, 44in36
Ms. 1563, 463^
Ms. 1572, 365nio
Ms. 1580, 36onn5,8, 362nio, 365ni5,
37oni2, 373m
Ms. 1582, 366n25, 422nnig,27, 458n40
Ms. i63g, 4i5nn6,7
Ms. i64g, 38gn27
Ms. 1658, 359n2i, 38gn44
Ms. 1663, 4i4nn27,33,35
Ms. lgn, 423nn47,4g
Ms. lgsg, 207-208
Ms. 2234, 178, 340-341, 355n68,
388ni5, 3g2ng, 40inng,i5,
402nn22,23,30, 403n48,
404nn65,67, 4o8ni2, 4ion38,
4i6ni3, 424n64, 425nn74,76,
426nn78,8o, 42-jnqq, 4y]xq<^
Ms. 2770, 4iinn2,4
Ms. 277g, 432ni5
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale de France
Ms. 680, 372n42, 374^4, 457M2
Ms. 727-728, 43gng
Ms. j6^, 91, 94~g5, g6, g7, 422nni6,28
Ms. 768, 3gon58
Ms. 770, 388nn9,i8
Ms. 774, 362n8, 366n26, 373n57,
386n23, 388nig
•478-
Index of Manuscripts
Ms. jj6, 4221116
Ms. 777, 36804
Ms. 825, 380111130,31,34, 3861131
Ms. 848,3651118
Ms. 849, 392119, 401118, 402nn25,27,
404n56, 4271192, 437074, 441036
Ms. g68, 394040
Parma, Biblioteca Palatina
Ms. 41, 360ml
Ms. 2232, 443023
Ms. de Rossi, gg, 298, 444027
Ms. de Rossi 1390, 91-94, 95, 96,
97, 98, 240, 242, 421118,
422111116,23,28, 375111135,43,50,
382012, 383038, 426079, 4280108,
4290134
Ms. Perreau 9/28, 422028
Ramat Gao, Bar Ilao Uoiversity
Ms. 286, 422028
Rome, Biblioteca Aogelica
Ms. 38, 3690021,22, 371027,
3720047,48,50
Ms. 46, 100-102, 105, 240, 421012,
4530031,36,40
Rome, Biblioteca Casaoateose
Ms. 38, 360013
Ms. 179, 381047
Turifl, Biblioteca Naziooale
Ms. 76, 97
Vaticao City, Biblioteca Apostolica
Vaticaoa
Ms. Urbioo 31, 388014
Ms. 5g, 410038
Ms. 2og, 380042
Ms. 233, 366034, 458025
Ms. 283,388012
Ms. 2gi, 457021
Ms. 2g5, 381047, 389026
Ms. 441, 144, 388023, 3890038,40
Ms. 528, 422028
•479-
INDEX OF TITLES
Account of the Chariot. See Ma'aseh Merkauah
Almagest, Claudius Ptolemaeus, 342
Asclepius, 277, 281
Aurca Dicta, Pythagoras, 17
Behinat ha-Dat, Elijah del Medigo, 161, 162
Beraita' de-Yosef ben 'Uzziel, 203
BookcjBahir, n, 12, 135
Booko/Contempiation. See Sefer ha-'Iuyun
Book ojthe Fruit, Claudius Ptolemaeus.
See Sefer ha-Peri
Book ojthe Imaginary Circles. See Kitab
al-Hada'iq
Book ojjosiphon, 11, 347-348, 4641122
Book ojNabbatean Agriculture, Abu Bakr ibn
'Ali al-Wahshiyya, 174, 263, 264
Book ojthe Religions ojthe Prophets,
259-260
Book oJTalismans, 276
Book ojYashar, 464-4651122
Book ojthe Zohar. See Sefer ha-Zohar
Book oJZoroaster, 174
•480-
Index of Titles
Centiloguium, Pseudo-Ptolemaeus,
254-255- 256
Chaldaean Oracles, 288
Collectanea, Yohanan Alemanno, 178, 183,
186, 190, 255-256, 291-292, 294,
340, 4131115
Commentary on Aristotle's De Interpretatione,
Averroes, 458-4591142
Commentary on Auicenna's Intentions of the
Philosophers, Moshe Narboni, 311
Commentary on the Bible, 264
Commentary on the Book ofjeremiah, Isaac
ben Yehudah Abravanel, 166-167, I &9
Commentary on the Divine Name, Asher ben
David, 93, 94, 97, 374n34
Commentary on Genesis, Didymus, 175
Commentary on the Guide ojthe Perplexed,
Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen, 87,
158-159, 160
Commentary on the Hajtarah, Nehemiah ben
Shlomo, 10, 318, 319
Commentary on the Litunjy, loseph ibn
Shraga, 413-414^5
Commentary on the Pentateuch
(anonymous), 146
Commentary on the Pentateuch, Abraham
Abulafia, 65, 66, 67, 71
Commentary on the Pentateuch, Abraham ibn
Ezra, 66, 278-279
Commentary on the Pentateuch, Isaac ben
Yehudah Abravanel, 170-171
Commentary on the Pentateuch, Nahmanides,
97, 99, 119, 375IM5
Commentary on Prayer, Menahem
Recanati, 113
Commentary on the Rationales of the
Commandments, Menahem Recanati, 98,
112, 119, 125, 126-127, I 33 _I 34> x 36
Commentary on the Secret of the
Tetratjrammaton, 250, 261-262, 263,
265-267, 268
Commentary on Sefer ha-'Edut, Abraham
Abulafia, 44, 74, 79
Commentary on Sejer ha-Melitz, Abraham
Abulafia, 85
Commentary on Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut,
Reuven Tzarfati, 149
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah
(anonymous), 95
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, Abraham
Abulafia, 149, 390^8
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, Azriel of
Gerona, 119, 120-121
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, Eleazar of
Worms, 203, 254, 258-259, 422ni8,
426nn82,89
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, Joseph
ben Shalom Ashkenazi,
4°3n52
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, Sa'adyah
Gaon, 265
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah,
Sabbatai Donnolo, n, 50,
87, 118
Commentary on the Seventy Names of
Metatron, Nehemiah ben Shlomo,
100-101, 318-319, 322, 42ini2
Commentary on Sontj of Sontjs, Ezra of
Gerona, 383^6
Commentary on the Talmudic Acjaddot, Ezra of
Gerona, 94, 116, 118
Commentary on the Ten Sefirot, Yehi'el
Nissim of Pisa, 40ini7
Commentary on the Ten Sefirot, Yohanan
Alemanno, 188-189
Commentary on the Thirteen Divine Attributes,
Asher ben David, 97
Commentary on the Torah, David Yom Tov
ibn Billya, 275-276
Commentary on the Torah, Menahem
Recanati, 98, 99, 112, 113, 115, 116,
119, 124, 125, 127, 128, 134-135, 289,
299, 375n 4 g, 3831138, 384n47,
4i6ni3
Corona Nominis Boni, Mithridates
(translation of Abraham ben
Axelrad's Keter Shem Tov), 203
Corpus Hermeticum (anonymous), 344
Crater Hermetis, Ludovico Lazzarelli, 258,
259, 260
•481-
Index of Titles
De Arte Cabalistica, Johann Reuchlin, 15,
233, 234, 263, 308, 417111125,26
De grammatohgk, Jacques Derrida, 138
De Harmonia Mundi, Francesco Giorgio,
4201119
De'ot ha-FilosoJm, Samuel ibn Tibbon, 342
De Radiis, Abu Yusuf ibn Yishak al-Kindi,
43om 4 3
De relujione Christiana, Marsilio Ficino, 175
De Substantia Orbis, Averroes, 161-162
De Verba Minjco, Johann Reuchlin,
230-231, 312
De Veritate Prophetica, Girolamo
Savonarola, 294
Dialotjhi d'Amore, Yehudah Abravanel
(Leone Ebreo), 169, 205, 303, 4ogn32
Diuine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, 13
Diuine Names, Pseudo-Dionysius, 13
'Einei ba-'Edah, Yohanan Alemanno, 292
'Em ha-Melekh (The Mother of the King), Abu
Aflah al-Syracusi, 464ns
Eternity ojthe Soul and the Godhead Hermes
Trismegistus (Enoch), 166
Fountain ojTife, Shlomo ibn Gabirol, 264
Gbayat al-Hakim. See Picatrix; Takhlit
he-Hakham
Great Parchment, Reuven Tzarfati, 148
Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides, 12, 30,
31-32. 33. 36, 42. 55. 56. 59. 61, 69,
96, 100, 147, 152, 157, 158, 221, 264,
289, 331, 342, 347, 353n49, 3721156
Hashau ha-'EJod, Profiat Duran, 342
Hayy bin Yoqtan (The Liuincj Son of the
Awakened), Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl,
28, 204, 205, 209, 424nn58,59,
46m20, 464ni3
Hayyei ha-'Olam ba-Ba' (The Life ojthe Next
World), Abraham Abulafia, 31, 42, 56,
57, 92, 95, 100-101, 221, 240-241,
242-244, 245, 256, 259, 260, 261,
294-295, 298, 36oni3, 371^4, 414^1
Hei ha-'0!amim, Yohanan Alemanno, 178
HeikhalotRabbati, 7, 8
HeikhalotZutarti, 7
Heptaplus, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,
152,231
Hesheq Shlomo, Yohanan Alemanno,
256-257, 416M3, 4i8n39, 424n59,
427nioi, 442nn4,9
HilkhotKauod, Eleazar of Worms,
455"65
Hokhmat ha-Nefesh, Eleazar of Worms, 97,
203,4561173
'Ljtjeret ba-Assiriyah, Abraham ben Me'ir de
Balmes, 394^3, 4i6n2i
'It)£jeret Hamudot, Elijah Hayyim of
Genazzano, 299
'Imrei Shefer, Abraham Abulafia, 179
Incoherence ojthe Incoherence, Averroes, 162,
200, 342
Keter Shem Tou, Abraham ben Axelrad,
93. 203
Keter Shem Tou, Shem Tov ben Abraham
ibn Gaon, 119, 386^3
Kitab al-Hada'iq (The Book ojthe Imaginary
Circles), Ibn al-SId al-Bataliyusi,
204, 205
Liber de Anima, Mithridates (translation of
Eleazar of Worms, Hokhmat
ha-Nefesh), 203
Liber de Causis, 99, 179, 401ml
Liber Scalae (Libra della scalla), 102
Lje ojthe Next World. See Hayyei ha-'Olam
ba-Ba'
Liqqutei Shikhehah ujeah, 413^4
Living Son ojthe Awakened. See Hayy
bin Yoqtan
Ma'aseh 'Ejod, Profiat Duran, 4ion40
Ma'aseh Merkauah (Account ojthe Chariot),
7-8, 12, 123, 131-132, 134, 157
Matjen David, David Yom Tov ibn Billya,
434-43 5 n 4 2
Index of Titles
Magical Conclusions, Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola, 283
Mahabbarot ha-Hesheq, Immanuel of
Rome, 14
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom
Scholem, 35, 308
Matzref la-Kesef Abraham Abulafia, 86,
3721151
Meadouis of Gold. See Muruj al-Dhabab
Me'ah Dibburim (Tbe Hundred Dicta), 255
Megillat 'Ahima'atz (Scroll of Ahima'atz),
'Ahima'atz ben Paltiel, 8, 9, n-12,
311, 43oni4i, 45ini7, 455n64
MegillatSetarim, 158
Mei'rat 'Einayyim, Yitzhaq of Acre, no, 249
Melekhet ha-Muskkelet, Apollonius of
Tyana, 206
Me'oznei Tzedeq, Abuhamed al-Ghazzali,
442n9, 46mi7
Meqor Hayyim, Samuel ibn Zarza, 259,
283, 427nioi, 464ml
Midrasb ha-Ne'elam on tbe Scroll of Ruth,
97, 4i4n2 7
Mif alot 'Elobim, Isaac ben Yehudah
Abravanel, 166, 168, 169, 171-172,
396ni5
Minhat Yehudah, Yehudah Hayyat,
213, 217, 220, 412ml, 4i3ni7,
4i5n5, 4i6ni3
Miqra'ot Gedolot, Abraham ibn
Ezra, 437n79
Mishneh Torah, Maimonides, 347
Mother of the King. See 'Em ha-Melekh
Muruj al-Dhahab (Meadows of Gold), Abu
al-Hasan 'Ali al-Mas'udi, 345
Nabbatean Agriculture, Abu Bakr ibn 'Ali
al-Wahshiyya, 174, 263, 264, 268,
3981145
On the Good, Pythagoras, 17
On the Possibility of Conjunction, Averroes,
143.342
'Or ha-Ganuz Ie-Tzaddiqim, Aharon
ha-Kohen Perlov of Apta, 62-63
'Or ha-Hayyim, Joseph Yavetz, 4i2n9
'Otzar Hayyim, Yitzhaq of Acre,
423nn38,50
Picatrix (Takhlit he-Hakham; Ghayat
al-Hakim), 183, 206-207, 276, 343.
344, 348, 4ogn37, 465n26
Praeparatio Euangelica, Eusebius of
Caesarea, 17
Prayer of Unity, Nehuniyah ben
ha-Qaneh, 98
Qiryat Sej/er, 414
Qouetz Al Yad, 404^7
Quality of the Adherence, 200
Quality of Conjunction, Abu Bakr, 342
Ra'aya' Meheimna, 300
Refutation o/All Heresies, Hippolytus of
Rome, 382nn20,22
Reshit Hokhmah, Abraham ibn Ezra,
4°3n5i
Sabbatai Seui, Gershom Scholem,
20, 4i2ng
Scales oj/Inquiries, Abu-Hamed, 342
Sefer AteretZeqenim, Isaac ben Yehudah
Abravanel, 166
Sefer BeritMenuhah, 172, 39727
Sefer Gan Na'ul, Abraham Abulafia, 289
Sefer Get ha-Shemot, Abraham Abulafia, 332
Sefer Ginzei ha-Melekh, 221
Sefer ha-Arukh, Nathan ben Yehi'el of
Rome, 11, 156
Sefer ha-Atzamim, Pseudo-Ibn Ezra, 264
Sefer ha-Bahir, n, 12, 135
Sefer ha-Bittahon, Yehudah ben
Bateirah, 262
Sefer ha-'Edut, Abraham Abulafia, 41
Sefer ha-Ge'ulah, Abraham Abulafia, 56
Sefer ha-Hajtarah, 41
Sefer ha-Hayyim (anonymous), 96, 97,
255.278
Sefer ha-Hayyim, Abraham Abulafia, 41
Sefer ha-Hesheq, Abraham Abulafia, 49, 101
•483-
Index of Titles
Sefer ha-'Iyyun (Book oJContemplation), 98,
142, 143, 144
Sefer ha-Majtehot, Abraham Abulafia, 112
Sefer ha-Malmad, 145
Sefer ha-Melammed, Abraham Abulafia, 331,
370116
Sefer ha-Me!itz, Abraham Abulafia,
72, 3881119
Sefer ha-Meshalim, Jacob ben Berakhiyah
ha-Naqdan, 96
Sefer ha-Meshiu, 215, 222, 285, 300
Sefer ha-Nasiy, Abraham Bar Hiyya, 342
Sefer ha-Navon, Nehemiah ben Shlomo, 10,
101, 37in23, 454n58
Sefer ha-Nefesh, 56
Sefer ha-'Ot, Abraham Abulafia, 45, 50, 62,
72, 78, 80, 86, 101, 243
Sefer ha-Peliy'ah, 144, 289, 290, 291-292
Sefer ha-Peri (Book ojthe Fruit), Claudius
Ptolemaeus, 254-255, 425n74
Sefer ha-Shamayim, 221
Sefer ha-Shem, Eleazar of Worms, 254
Sefer ha-Temunah (Temunot), 290, 291
Sefer ha-Tzeruf 38, 140, 141, 143,
144, 388M9
Sefer ha-Yashar, Abraham Abulafia, 41, 289
Sefer ha-Yihud, 124, 126, 136, 137
Sefer Hayyei ha-Nefesh, Abraham Abulafia,
289,331, 372n 5 6
Sefer ha-Zohar (Book o/theZohar), 28, 98,
in, 112, 113, 114, 119, 120, 160, 203,
210, 214-215, 217, 220, 221, 224-226,
230, 297, 300, 301, 4i2ni3, 415m,
416M3, 4i8nn39,4i
Sefer Keter Nehora', Aharon ha-Kohen Perlov
of Apta, 63
Sefer Ma'arekhet ha-'Elohut, 121, 131, 148,
149, 179, 214, 215-216, 217, 220, 221,
298, 301, 343, 4i2nn7,u, 4i3n20
Sefer Ma'avar Yaboq, Aharon Berakhiah of
Modena, 333-335
Sefer Majteah ha-Hokhmot, 360ml,
368n8;ng;ni4-i8
Sefer Majteah ha-Re'ayon, Abraham
Abulafia, 328-329
Sefer Mar'ot ha-Tzoue'ot, David ben Yehudah
he-Hasid, 112
Sefer Minhat Yehudah, Yehudah Hayyat,
215, 221
Sefer Ner 'Elohim, 38, 140, 141, 146, 147,
148, 150, 244-245, 251, 422n29
Sefer 'Or ha-Sekhel, Abraham Abulafia,
48, 51, 57, 221, 261, 295, 298, 311,
33i,443n22
Sefer 'Otzar 'Eden Ganuz, Abraham Abulafia,
47, 62, 83, 85, 89-90
Sefer Raziel, 160, 207-208, 238, 343,
393n26
Sefer Raziel ha-Ma!akh, 207
Sefer Sajah Berurah, Abraham ibn Ezra,
325-326
Sefer Shibbolei ha-Leqet, Tzidqiah ben
Abraham, 8, 10, 43
Sefer Shimmushei Tehilim, 183
Sefer Shimmushei Torah, 183
Sefer Shomer Mitzvah, Abraham
Abulafia, 49, 50
Sefer Sitrei Torah, 42, 147
Sefer Sullam ha-'AIiyah, Yehudah
Albotini, 38
Sefer Toledot Adam, 150, 151, 152,
182, 39in69
Sefer Yetzirah, 23, 36, 83, 89-90, 92, 97, 98,
100, 159, 185, 239, 244, 245, 248,
249, 252, 261, 263, 342-343, 37in30,
407n33, 424n88
Sha'arei Tzedeq, Nathan ben Sa'adyah
Harar, 34, 38, 75-76 80, 140, 141,
300, 37in2i, 401ml, 440^0
Sha'ar ha-Gemul, Nahmanides, 96, 97,
98-99
Sha'ar ha-Hesheq, Yohanan Alemanno,
178, 344-347
Sha'ar ha-Niqqud, Joseph Gikatilla, 366^9
Sha'ar ha-Shamayyim, Ibn Latif, 152, 298
Sha'ar ha-Sho'el, Azriel of Gerona, 93-94,
95, 97, 119, 38mio
Sheua' Netiuot ha-Torah, Abraham Abulafia,
61, 160, 367^7, 393n26, 4i9n6
Shimmushei Torah, 66
•484-
Index of Titles
Shir ha-Ma'aht, Yohanan Alemanno, 188
Shi'ur Qomah, 159-160, 238, 321-322
454n58,
Shushan Sodot, Moshe of Kiev, 4401130
Sitrei Torah, Abraham Abulafia, 31, 100
Small Parchment, Reuven Tzarfati, 148
Sodei Razayya', Eleazar of Worms, 3651110,
4521120, 454111149,53, 456:172
Sodot ha-Niqqud, Joseph Gikatilla, 93
Sullam ha-'Aliyah, Yehudah Albotini,
144-145
Tiqqun Middot ha-Nefesh, Ibn Gabirol,
4611118
Treasury of Leaves, 342
TzaJTiatPa'aneah, Joseph al-Ashqar,
3781182
TzaJhatPa'aneah, Joseph Bonfils, 4031151
Tzedat ha-Derakhim, 342
Tzurat ha-Aretz, Abraham bar Hiyya, 342
Ve-Zot Li-Yhudah, Abraham Abulafia,
82, 419116
Ta'amei ha-Mitzu>ot, Menahem Recanati,
124, 132, 136, 3801142
Takhlit he-Hakham (Picatrix; Ghayat
al-Hakim), 183, 206-207, 2 76, 343>
344, 348, 4091137, 4651126
Theolotjy oJAristotle, 264
Tiqqunei Zohar, 215, 216, 217, 300, 4121113
Yeshu'ot Meshiho, Isaac ben Yehudah
Abravanel, 166-167, ^9
Yesod 'Olam, Abraham ben Hananel of
Esquira, 279
Yesod 'Olam, Isaac ben Joseph Israeli, 342
Zohar. See Sefer ha-Zohar
•485-
INDEX OF NAMES
Abner of Burgos, 303
Abraham, 69, 73, 75, 167, 172, 174, 175,
220, 241, 245, 252-253, 398111141,44
Abraham bar Hiyya, 4601111
Abraham ben Axelrad, 93
Abraham ben Azriel, 320
Abraham ben David of Posquieres, 24
Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi, 213
Abraham ben Hananel of Esquira, 279,
436nn6o,62,66
Abraham ben Shalom, 47, 48, 50
Abrams, Daniel, 92, 94, 35in20, 373n6,
374nni5,2i, 376n6o, 377nn62, 71,72,
384^1, 4451143, 4531130
Abravanel, Isaac ben Yehudah, 165-169,
170-172, 176, 204, 205, 213,
282-283, 396ni5, 465n22
Abravanel, Yehudah (Leone Ebreo), 165,
169-170, 205, 235, 4ogn32, 417^3
Abu Aflah al-Syracusi, 464ns
Abu Aharon ben Shmuel, 8, 9, 154-155,
377n66
•486-
Index of Names
Abu al-Faraj, Nissim, 17, 262
Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl. See Ibn Tufayl
Abulafia, Abraham ("Zekhariyahu"), 2, 3,
5, 10, 14, 17, 18, 23, 24-25, 27,
30-39, 41-51, 53, 54-74, 76, 77-88,
89-91,92-93,94,95,96,97,99,
IOO-IOI, 102, 104, I06-IO7, II0 > 1I2 .
113, 121, 128, 137, 139-I4O, 141, 146,
147, 148-149, 150, 151, I52, 156, 158,
159, 160, 179, 185, 199, 212, 217,
2ig-220, 221, 228, 237, 239,
240-244, 245, 246, 247, 256, 259,
260-261, 262, 265, 284, 285,
289-290, 294-295, 296, 297-298,
299, 300, 311, 319-320, 328-333,
337. 338, 343. 36M21, 3621113,
3671147, 370116, 372111151,52,56,
3931126, 419116, 421114, 4221129,
426111184,88, 458-4591142, 4621146
Abulafla, Shmuel, 30
Abulafla, Todros ha-Levi, 299
Abu Nasr al-Farabi, 96
Adam, 75, 171, 172, 173, 237, 249,
331.333
Agrippa of Netesheim, Cornelius,
283, 306, 308, 457118
Aharon Berakhiah of Modena,
333-335.338
Aharon ha-Kohen Perlov of Apta, 62-63
'Ahima'atz ben Paltiel, 10, 310-311
'Ahituv ben Yitzhaq of Palermo, 12, 49
Akiva, R., 7, 22, 144, 220
Albalag, Isaac, 342
AI-Bataliyusi, Ibn al-Sid, 204, 205,
4ogn32
Albo, Joseph, 166, 356^6
Albotini, Yehudah, 38, 144-145, 146, 285
Alemanno, Yitzhaq, 205, 302
Alemanno, Yohanan, 3-4, 5, 14, 18, 94,
104, 152, 156, 160, 161, 162, 165,
177-191, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198,
199-201, 203-205, 207, 208,
209-210, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226,
22g, 252-258, 259, 260, 261,
281-282, 283, 284, 285, 291-292,
294, 295, 296, 297, 300, 301, 302,
303, 311, 340-343, 344-346, 347,
348, 4o8ni4, 413M5, 42in4, 423^6,
424n59, 425n77, 426ngi, 43oni43,
436n63, 441^7, 442ng, 445nn46,50,
464ni5, 465^6
Alexander of Macedon, 347-348
Alexander of Neckham, 228
Alexander the Minorite, 12
Alfonso de Valladolid, 228
Alfonso Sabio, ig2, 228, 271-272
Al-Ghazzali, Abuhamed, 442ng
Al-Kindi, Abu Yusuf ibn Yishak, 43oni43
Al-Mas'udi, Abu al-Hasan 'Ali, 345
Alqabetz, Shlomo, 285
Alqastiel, Joseph, 213, 415m
Altmann, Alexander, 356n77, 358nn7,g,
38in8, 386n27, 3g3n24, 3g8n35
al-Wahshiyya, Abu Bakr ibn 'Ali, 263,
264, 265
'Amittai ben Shefatyah, 10, 315-323,
45on4, 452n26, 455n64
Amram, 75
Anatoli, Jacob ben Abba Mari, 5, 12, 13,
156-157, ig3
Angelet, Joseph, no, in, 112
Apollonius ofTyana, ig6, 205, 206,
442IH
Aquinas, Thomas, 208
Arama, Yitzhaq, 213
Aristotle, 55, 58, 60, 116, 118, 160, 167,
168, i6g, 170, 181, ig8-igg, 223, 311,
341, 342, 458n2 7 , 4 4 8- 4 5gn 4 2
Arnauld of Villanova, 228
Asher ben David, 24, g3, g4, g7, 300, 301,
3741134. 381119
Asin Palacios, Miguel, 102
Atlas, 319
Averroes, 143, 160, 161-162, igg, 200,
201, 288, 342, 3g3n2g, 43gng,
458-4 5 gn 4 2
Avicebron. See Ibn Gabirol, Solomon, 2g,
117, ig6
Avicenna, 87, 253, 2g5, 434n36, 442n8
Azriel ben Yehudah, Moshe, 240, 421M2
•487-
Index of Names
Azriel of Gerona, 93-94, 94, 95, 97, 115,
118-119, 120, 130, 138, 183, 233,
300, 301
Bacchelli, Franco, 229, 263
Baer, Yitzhak, 20
Balmes, Abraham ben Me'ir de, 196, 223,
302, 394n33, 4i6n2i
Barukh, Rabbi, 90
Beit-Arie, Malachi, 375^0
Ben Azzai, 141-142, 144, 145
Benivieni, Girolamo, 424^9
Benjamin, Walter, 309, 310
Benjamin ben Abraham 'Anav, 10
Berakhiah of Modena, Aharon,
333-335-338
Bernardine of Siena, St., 37onio
Besht (Israel ben Eliezer Ba'al
ShemTov), 307
Bibago, Abraham, 204, 424^9
Bland, Kalman P., 160
Blau, Joseph, 229
Boehme, Jacob, 334
Bonaventure, St., 17
Bonfil, Robert, 298, 35inn20,29,
352nn2g,3i, 39inn2,3, 3g2n4,
405n5, 4o8n8, 411m, 4i4n36,
4i7n23, 443n22, 449nioo
Bonfils, Joseph, 403n5i
Bouthoorn, Ruud M., 258
Bruni, Leonardo, ^g6-^gyni2
Bruno, Giordano, 187, 344, 436n63
Busi, Giulio, 229, 375^0, 39on5i,
443-444H23
Correggio, Giovanni Mercurio da,
229, 284
Crescas, Hasdai, 166
Crescentiis, Petrus de, 343
Creuzer, Georg Friedrich, 309
Culianu (Couliano), loan P., 313, 378n78,
43oni43, 432n8, 436n3g, 445n46
Dagaph, Joseph, 343
Da Meleto, Francesco, 294, 44in2
Dan, Joseph, 9, 448^5, 465n22
Daniel, 87
Dante Alighieri, 13, 102, 288, 329,
367n47, 36gn28
Dato, Mordekhai, 163
David, 74, 82
David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, 25, no, in,
112, 238, 356n77, 382^5, 38gn40,
4591142
David of Agrigento, 4i4n26
David Yom Tov Ibn Billya. See Ibn Billya,
David Yom Tov
Deborah, 54
Del Medigo, Elijah, 5, 160, 161, 162, 184,
193, 194, 208, 288, 302, 308,
393-3941129
Derrida, Jacques, 137, 138, 387^6
Didymus, 175
Donnolo, Sabbatai, 11, go, 118, 155, 373^
Douglas, Mary, 124
Dukan, Michele, g6, g7, 375n48
Dunash ben Tamim, go
Duran, Profiat, 342, 4ion40, 460^,
46mi3
Caballeria, Pedro de, 303
Campanella, Tommaso, 344
Caspi, Joseph, 342
Cassirer, Ernst, 310, 386ni6, 448n95
Cassuto, Umberto, 195, 205
Copenhaver, Brian, 4ignio, 432n8,
4471170
Copernicus, 465n25
Cordovero, Moshe, 38, 210, 238, 284,
285, 2g2, 333,4 5 gn54
Eco, Umberto, 133, 367n47, 36gn28,
385-386^5, 444n28, 457ni5,
458n4i, 46on6o
Egidio da Viterbo, 2gi
Egidio Romano, 208
Eleazar ben Moshe ha-Darshan
Ashkenazi, 90, 100, 102, 104
Eleazar Hazan of Speyer, 155
Eleazar of Worms, 8, 53-54, 97, 100, 127,
155, 203, 241, 254, 255, 258-25g,
Index of Names
260, 321, 323, 4221118, 425nn6g,70,
426111182,89, 42911124, 4541149,
4561173
Eleazar Qallir, 10
Eliade, Mircea, 124, 3831131, 44911103
Elijah ben Shlomo, 39
Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin of
Genazzano. Sec Genazzano, Elijah
Hayyim ben Benjamin of
Elijah Romanus, 288
Elior, Rachel, 413m/
Elisha of Constantinople, 288-289,
439n9
Enoch, 81, 259, 260, 282, 319, 322, 323,
427nioi, 45on4, 455^8
Enoch (Hermes Trismegistus), 165, 166,
167, 284, 305
Enos, 172
Eupolemus, 175
Eusebius of Caesarea, 17, 319
Evans, R J. W., 307, 447nn6g,76
Eve, 75
Ezra of Gerona, 94, 115, 116, 118, 125,
135, 183, 250, 301
Faber, Jacob, 15
Farissol, Abraham, 195, 302, 303
Ficino, Marsilio, 15, 161-162, 165,
166, 173, 174, 175, 176, 189, 193,
194, 197, 205-206, 209, 210,
223, 234, 253, 267, 268, 283,
294, 295, 306-307, 309,
313. 347. 348> 397 nn 3i,32>
424159
Finkelson, Maurice, 266
Finzi, Jacob Israel, 298, 443M3
Finzi, Yehudah Eleazar Makaby, 298
Finzi, Yitzhaq Elijah, 149, 298
Finzi family, 298, 443 n23
Francis of Assisi, St., 12, 313
Frederick II, 192, 325, 329, 338, 354^4,
46on62
Friedman, Shama, 454^4
Funkenstein, Amos, 312, 354^6,
449 ni 04
Gabriel, 57, 149, 150
Gedalyah ben Yehiyah, 175-176
Genazzano, Elijah Hayyim ben Benjamin
of, 16, 162, 173-175, 176, 216, 238,
298-299, 356n78, 398n45, 445^0
Gersonides (Levi ben Gershon, Ralbag),
17, 279, 342
Gikatilla, Joseph, 32, 33, 42, 58-59, 91,
93, no, in, 124, 131, 135, 141, 148,
160, 162, 190, ig9, 210, 220, 300, 334,
366n39, 386n28
Giorgio, Francesco, 291, 42oni9
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 309, 310
Gottlieb, Efraim, 148, 216, 290, 37on7,
374nni6,29, 3gonn48,52,55,
394n34, 4iinn5,6, 4i2nio,
4i3nn2i,23, 44onig, 444n26
Gracian. See Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen
Graetz, Heinrich, 20
Grossman, Avraham, g
Hai Gaon, R., 6, 7, 102-103
Halfan, Elijah Menahem, 302, 304
Ham, 175, 176
Hamitz, Joseph, 163
Hanegraaff, Wouter J., 258, 260
Hayek, Simon, 405m
Hayyat, Yehudah, 37, 116, 146, 152, i7g,
ig8, 213-216, 217, 220, 221, 222, 225,
238, 2g2, 2g8, 300-301, 304,
4i2nn8,n,i3, 4i3nni5,i7, 415m
Hayyim ha-Kohen, Yitzhak ben, 213,
4imn2,4
Hayyim Tzemah, Jacob, 163
Heber, 172
Hefetz, Moshe, 216-217
Heredia, Paulus de, 228, 303
Hermes Trismegistus (Enoch), 165, 166,
167, 284, 305
Herrera, Abraham Kohen, 163
Herrmann, Klaus, 254
Hillel ben Shemuel ofVerona, 12, 13, 5g,
g6, gg, 150, 156, 157, 208, 326-327,
338, 36gn28, 457nni5,i6
Hippolytus of Rome, 382n20
•489-
Index of Names
Ibn Adret, Shlomo ben Abraham, 24, 37,
49, S ^ 1 , 93, I2 3> I2 9> 2X 5> 220
Ibn Arabi of Murcia, 28, 38
Ibn Billya, David Yom Tov, 264, 275-276,
280, 282, 283, 434-435^2
Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 66, 90, 91, 96, 114,
150, 189, 237, 271, 275, 278, 279,
280, 281, 283, 325-326, 327, 328,
329, 342, 347, 39on 5 8, 393n26,
403151, 437IV9, 457n6
Ibn Falaquera, Shem Tov ben Joseph, 172,
263, 264, 342, 46mi6, 462^6
Ibn Gabirol, Solomon (Avicebron), 29,
117, 196, 264, 342, 38mg, 46mi8
Ibn Gaon, Shem Tov ben Abraham, 32,
42, in, nglbn Hayyan, Jabir, 276
Ibn Hunain, Isaac, 276
Ibn Kaspi, Joseph, 342
Ibn Latif, Isaac, 124, 142, 147, 148,
151-152, 199, 220-221, 297, 298, 301,
343, 38m9, 3gin69, 415^, 462n43
Ibn Malka, Yehudah ben Nissim, 432ni4
Ibn Matka, Yehudah, 5, 12
IbnMotot, Shmuel, 221, 283, 297
Ibn Paqudah, Bahya, 29
Ibn Ragel, Ali, 255
Ibn Shraga, Joseph, 213, 216-218, 304,
413-414^5, 4i4n26
Ibn Tibbon, Samuel, 342
Ibn Tufayl, Abu Bakr, 28, 201, 204-205,
253, 423^6, 424n59, 46in20
Ibn Tzayyah, Joseph, 285
Ibn Waqar, Joseph, 156
Ibn Zarza, Samuel, 209, 259, 264, 275,
280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 345, 347,
348, 427nioi, 464nn8,n
Immanuel ben Shelomo, 95
Immanuel daToscanella (Melli), 299
Immanuel of Rome, 13, 156, 208, 288,
377n76
Isaac, 172
Isaac ben Joseph Israeli, 46mi4
Isaac ben Mordekhai (Maestro Gaio), 95
Isaac of Acre. See Yitzhaq of Acre
Isaac of Bedresh, 36, 90, 91
Isaiah ofTrani, 43, 95
Itzhaqi, Shelomo, 433^9
Jacob, 75, 171, 172, 334, 335, 454n54
Jacob ben Abraham, 47, 49
Jacob ben Berakhiyah ha-Naqdan, 96
Jacob ben Jacob ha-Kohen of Segovia, 90,
299, 393n26
Jacob ben Sheshet, 118
Jacob ben Solomon, 425x1-7$
Jacob Israel, 298
Jafet, 345
Jellinek, Adolph (Aharon), 21, 290,
36oni3
Jeremiah, 167, 169, 170, 179, 246, 250,
251, 262, 266, 289, 399n50
Joachim de Fiore, 12, 228, 37on6
Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi, 25, 252,
3561177, 4°3n5 2
Joseph ben Shem Tov, 204
Joseph of Hamadan, no, in, 124,
126, 3 5 6n 77
Judah, 86
Jung, Carl, 44gni03
Kanarfogel, Ephraim, 10
Kaufmann, Yehezkel, 270
Kupfer, Efraim, 225
Kushnir-Oron, Michal, 290, 41M5,
439ni6, 44onni8,i9,20,23,28,
4411133
Landauer, Meier, 21
Lazzarelli, Ludovico, 258-261, 267, 283,
284, 427nioi
Le Fevre de la Boderie, Nicolas, 232
Lefevre d'Etaples, Jacques, 223, 309
Lelli, Fabrizio, 387^, 395nni,4,
398nn35,36,37,39,42, 40onni,5,
40in7, 402n22, 4o6nio, 407^6,
4ion37, 4i6n2i, 44in37
Lemech, 172
Lemlein, Asher, 216-217, 22 5, 2 97 _2 98,
442n2
Leo X, Pope, 15, 18, 234
•490-
Index of Names
Leo Hebraeus. See Gersonides
Leone da Modena (Yehudah Arieh of
Modena), 13, 163, 312
Leone Ebreo (Yehudah Abravanel),
165, 169-170, 205, 235, 4ogn32,
4171123
Leon Sinai of Cologne, 216
Levi, 172
Levi ben Abraham, 462^8
Levi ben Gershon. See Gersonides
Levita, Elijah Bahur, 302
Liebes, Yehuda, 236, 358n6, 35(^28,
374n26, 385ni2, 4i8n42, 419^,
421m, 428ni4, 43oni36, 445n44,
453«30
Llull, Ramon (Ramon Lull), 29, 228, 338
Loew, Yehudah (Maharal) of Prague,
209-210
Lot, 70
Luria, Isaac, 21, 210
Luther, Martin, 304, 446n6i
Maharal (Yehudah Loew of Prague),
209-210
Maimon, Solomon, 436^0
Maimonides, 12, 20, 30, 31, 44, 50,
55-56, 59, 60, 61, 65-66, 94, 100,
103, 121, 124, 132, 133, 152, 157-158,
159, 199, 241, 245, 274, 275, 294,
295. 33i. 347. 359ni9> 393-394n29.
4ogn25, 415^, 432nni5,i6
Mallarme, Stephane, 309
Manuel, Juan, 228
Marranus, 223
Marx, Alexander, 4i4n28
McGinn, Bernard 42on22
Medici, Cosimo de', 192, 348, 465n25
Medici, Lorenzo de', 192, 193, 204
Medici family, 234
Melli (Immanuel daToscanella), 299
Menahem ben Benjamin, 92, 95, 96, 97,
98, 244, 375n48
Menahem Mendel of Shklov, 39
Meshullam bar Rabbi Qalonymos bar
Yehudah, 155
Messer Leon, David, 160-161, 196, 198,
199, 204, 210, 223, 226, 341, 3g6ni5,
4171123
Messer Leon, Yehudah, 160, 178, 196,
292, 342, 46on6
Metatron, 81
Methuselah, 171, 172
Mithridates, Flavius, 16-17, r 8, I 4°. 1 4^,
193, 194, 195, 197, 203, 204, 226,
234, 262, 284, 295, 298, 303, 4i7n26,
4i8n40
Molitor, Franz, 310
Molkho, Shlomo, 303
Momigliano, Arnaldo, 310-311
Monoimos the Arab, 122, 132, 134
Mor Hayyim, Yitzhaq, 162, 195, 198, 213,
216, 218, 222, 224-225, 238, 292,
300, 304, 4i2ni2, 415m, 4i7n34
Moses, 41, 46, 54, 55, 66, 73, 75-76, 82,
83, 122, 142, 144, 145, 169, 171, 172,
173, 183, 186, 187, 256, 331, 427nioi
Moses bar Qalonymos, 155
Moses ben Yehudah Galeano, 463^2
Moshe, Rabbi, 8-9
Moshe Azriel ben Eleazar ha-Darshan of
Erfurt, 100, 102
Moshe ben Maimon. See Maimonides
Moshe ben Nahman. See Nahmanides
Moshe ben Qalonymos, 315-316,
45on2
Moshe ben Shem Tov de Leon, no, in,
124, 220
Moshe (Moses) ben Shimeon of Burgos
(Cinfa), 32, 299
Moshe ben Yoav, 116, 160, 195, 208
Moshe of Kiev, 440^0
Moshe of Salerno, 13
Motzkin, Arieh L., 461^3
Muhammad, 102
Nahmanides (Moshe ben Nahman),
27-28, 41, 50, 65-66, 67, 86, 90, 96,
97, 98-99, 112, 118, 119-120, 123,
130, 135, 149, 158, 183, 187, 215, 300,
3°i. 342. 375n45> 4621144
•491-
Index of Names
Narboni, Moshe, 142-143, 204, 295, 311,
342, 4231156, 4241159, 43011143
Nathan ben Sa'adyah Harar (Nathan the
Wise), 34, 38, 47, 48, 75-76, 80-81,
140, 141, 246, 247, 250, 260, 300,
364^1 37on6, 37in2i, 401ml,
44on30
Nathan ben Yehi'el of Rome, 6-7, 11,
155-156, 323, 3 5 onni2, 13
Nathan of Gaza, 163
Nehemiah ben Shlomo of Erfurt
(Troestlin the Prophet), 23, 37, 100,
101, 243, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321-323,
37in23, 377n66, 42ini2,
452nn26,2 7 ,453n39
Nehuniyah ben ha-Qaneh, 98
Neubauer, Adolph, 207
Neumark, David, 11
Nicholas III, Pope, 31, 43, 44, 46, 79,
362~363ni6
Noah, 75, 172
Numenius, 16, 173-174, 356nn73,75,
357n84
Orlandus, 173
'Ovadiah the prophet, 335-337
Pedaya, Haviva, 38on43, 381m, 394^9,
403n40, 44on22, 445^3
Philolaus, 223
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 15-16,
17, 18, 37, 102, 112, 137, 140, 152,
153, 161, 162, 165, 174, 175, 178, 183,
184, 185, 186, 190, 191, 193, 194, 195,
197, 198-199, 200, 205, 209, 210,
223, 226, 228, 229, 231, 233, 234,
283, 284, 285, 288, 294, 298, 301,
306, 308, 310, 312, 341, 343, 348,
405n7, 409n32, 424^9,
44gnnio7,io8
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni Francesco,
205, 283
Pier Leone da Spoleto, 193, 267
Pines, Shlomo, 156, 354^6, y/m^,
392n7, 393n2i, 396n20, 403n49,
434HH33.34. 4391M3. 4461154,
459n46, 46on6i, ^6in^y, 463^1
Plato, 16, 17, 161, 162, 165, 166, 167,
168-169, I 7°. I 7 I . I 75> I 79> I ^i. 199,
223, 311, 333, 342, 343, 3g6-397n22,
439ml
Plethon, Georgius Gemistos, 175, 288
Plotinus, 295, 311
Postel, Guillaume, 112
Pratensis, Felix, 234
Pseudo-Dionysius, 13
Pseudo-ibn Ezra, 264
Pseudo-Ptolemaeus, 256
Ptolemaeus, Claudius, 254-255, 273, 276,
342, 433n20
Pythagoras, 15, 16, 17, 165, 166, 170-171,
174, 397H24. 4171126, 449H94
Qalonimus, 32
Qalonymos ben Qalonymos ben Meir, 5,
13.4251174
Qalonymos ben Sabbatai, 9
Qalonymos family, 6, 8, 9, 155, 317, 320
Qalonymos the Elder, 155
Qimhi, David, 341
Ralbag. See Gersonides
Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaqi), 9, 335
Ravitzky, Aviezer, 158, 3g2nni2,i5,
393H20, 394n34, 407^1, 438^
Raziel, 43, 85, 151, 160, 362ni3
Recanati, Menahem, 3, 14, 16, 17, 18, 94,
98, 99, 101, 102, 104, 106, 107, 109,
111-116, 118, 119-121, 123, 124, 125,
126-127, 128-130, 131-136, 137-138,
139-140, 143, 146, 148, 149, 156, 190,
212, 220, 224, 225, 226, 238,
289-290, 296, 298-299, 300, 301,
343, 375nn49,50, 386n28
Reina, Joseph della, 301
Reuchlin, Johann, 15, 16, 37, 205, 223,
226, 230-231, 233, 234, 235, 283,
295, 306, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312,
4481194
Riccius, Paulus, 234, 295, 296
•492-
Index of Names
Richler, Benjamin, 104
Rieti, Moshe, 160
Rigo, Caterina, 99, 376^156,58, 4im43
Robert of Anjou, 288
Roth, Cecil, 302, 410^9, 411m, 446^1
Ruderman, David, 358n8, 393n3g,
39g-40oni, 405n5, 4o6ni2, 411m,
4i4n36, 4i7n26, 42onni5,23,
446nn54,55,58, 46on62, 465n23
Sa'adyah ben Yitzhaq Sigilmasi, 47, 48, 50
Sa'adyah Gaon, 90, 155, 265
Saba, Abraham, 213
Salimbene, 325, 338
Samuel the Pietist (he-Hasid), 155
Savonarola, Girolamo, 294, 306
Schaefer, Peter, 42gni35, 455n64
Schelling, Friedrich, 309
Scholarios, George, 288, 289
Scholem, Gershom, 20, 21, 35-36, 37, 52,
92, 107, 108, 109, 114, 119, 130-131,
133, 137, 138, 140, 217, 229, 258, 263,
266, 274, 290, 299, 308-310, 311,
312, 358nn2,3, 36m2i, 366-367^9,
386ni6, 449ni03, 455n64, 456n74
Schwartz, Dov, 271, 425^4, 427nioi,
429ni2 5 ,43in 5
Scotus, Michael, 156
Secret, Francois, 207, 229, 4i8n4i
Sermoneta, Joseph B. (Giuseppe), 99, 100,
156, 193. 327. 353111143,48,
354nn55.58. 3761159, 38013, 392n6,
400m, 405n5, 462n37
Seth, 172
Seznec, Jean, 301-302
Shadday, 81, 82, 84
Shalom, Abraham, 166
Shaul ha-Kohen, 168, 288
Shelomo ben Nathan Orgieri, 206
Shem, 171, 172
Shemaryah Ikriti of Negroponte, 5,
13,288
Shem Tov ben Shem Tov, 172, 284
Shem Tov, Moses ben de Leon, 220
Shem Tov of Folia, 290, 291
Shimeon bar Yohai, 22, 171, 200, 220,
222-223, 4i8n39
Shlomo ben Moshe ha-Kohen, 49, 50
Shlomo ben Rabbi David, 49
Shlomo he-Hazan ben Rabbi Yakhin, 49
Shmuel ben Nahmani, 125
Shmuel of Cologne, 216
Simon ben Eleazar, 223
Simon Magus, 264-265
Sira, 250, 251
Socrates, 171
Solomon, 54, 206, 282, 283, 427nioi
Spinoza, Barukh, 136, 210, 334
Steinschneider, Moritz, 93, 272, 274, 275,
432H15
Suhrawardi (al-Maqtul; Ishraqi), 289
Swietlicki, Catherine, 42in27
Ta-Shma, Israel M., 290, 35oni2,
352n37, 362nn7,n, 44on20, 4411131,
4431112
Thode, Henry, 313
Tirosh-Rothschild (Tirosh-Samuelson) ,
Hava, 223, 394n33, 396ni5, 400m,
405nn5,7, 46on2
Tishby, Isaiah, 108, 109, 130, 383^7,
388ni2, 4i3n25
Todros of Rome, 6
Togarmi, Barukh, 36, 93, 104,
373HI3
Toussaint, Stephane, 209, 283, 4111147,
424n59, 425nn67,68, 432ml
Troestlin the Prophet. See Nehemiah ben
Shlomo of Erfurt, 100
Tzarfati, Meshullam, 393n26
Tzarfati, Natronay, 47, 48, 50
Tzarfati, Reuven, 5, 18, 116, 148-150, 217,
239, 251-252, 253, 299, 300, 4i2nio,
445H46
Tzemah, Jacob Hayyim, 163
Tzevi, Sabbatai, 79, 291, 44on29
Tzidqiah ben Abraham Rofe', 10, 32,
43.95
Urbach, E. E., 321
•493-
Index of Names
Vajda, Georges, ioo, 137, 3691127,
4091120, 4151110, 43011143, 4321114,
435n55>436nn57,59
Valla, Lorenzo, 311
Vidas, Elijah de, 3661139
Vital, Hayyim, 38
Walker, D. P., 305, 307
Weber, Max, 305
Weinstock, Israel, 3771166
Werblowsky, R. J. Zwi, 108, 379114
Wirszubski, Chaim, 193, 194, 195, 204,
229, 284, 298, 3591119, 405117,
407:127, 4181140, 4191112
Wolfson, Elliot R., 11, 118, 312, 3591129,
4481195, 4491111103,106,107, 4531144,
4591142
Yagel, Abraham, 163, 176, 4651123
Yates, Frances Amelia, 153, 229, 237, 282,
285, 296, 304-307, 344, 4ogn37,
4ignio
Yavetz, Joseph, 214, 4i2nn8,g
Yehi'el Nissim of Pisa, 180-181, 40ini7
Yehonathan ben Aviezer ha-Kohen, 94,
95.96,97
Yehudah Barceloni, 265, 42gni35
Yehudah ben Bateirah, 262
Yehudah ben Shelomo of Barcelona, 96.
See Yehudah Salmon
Yehudah ha-Levi, 29, 172, 271, 325
Yehudah he-Hasid, go, gi, g2, g5, 102,
127, 155, 428ni23
Yehudah Salmon (Yehudah ben Shelomo
ofBarcelona), 32, 50, g6
Yehudah Romano, 13, 17, g5, gg-100, 156,
208, 288, 342, 462n37
Yehudah the Hasmonean, 444n25
Yitzhak ben Hayyim ha-Kohen, 213,
4imn2,4
Yitzhaq ben Mordekhai of Mantua,
444H27
Yitzhaq ben Yedayah, 86
Yitzhaq ben Yehi'el of Pisa, 180, 188, ig5,
ig8, 222, 223, 225, 226, 404^8,
415m
Yitzhaq Elijah, 2gg, 301, ^^.niy
Yitzhaq ha-Kohen, 2gg
Yitzhaqi, Shlomo (Rashi), g
Yitzhaq of Acre, 34, 38, no, in, 112, ng,
120, 128, i5g, 246, 247~24g,
250-251, 260, 261, 263, 265-266,
301, 3gon47, 401ml, 423^6,
424n65, 44on30
Yitzhaq Sagi Nahor (Ytizhaq the Blind),
27, 117, 118, 250, 300, 301
Yohanan ben Zakkai, 123
Zerahyah ben Sha'altiel Hen (Gracian),
5,12, 14, g 5 ,g6, 97, gg, 102,
156, 157, 158, i5g, 160, 326, 327,
4571115
Zoroaster, 15-16, 165, 173, 174,
175-176, 288, 28g, 3g8n4i,
399n50
Zorzi Veneto, Francesco, 234
•494-
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